Improved Student Phone, Parking Habits Shortchange College

Author: Tom Drescher

With recent budget adjustments made to counteract the effects of a national economic downturn, Middlebury College is looking to boost income and limit gratuitous spending. As a result of the recent fiscal examination, other, somewhat odd financial issues have been appearing.
In the last few years, the College has been losing large amounts of money in two rather unusual areas: parking violations and the long-distance phone service.
For the 2001-2002 academic year, the College made $80,000 on fines associated with towing. The towing fees collected to date this year total a meager $11,000. The College is facing a $60,000 loss in revenue if students continue to park legally. At a time when excess money is scarce, this relatively small figure could have a significant impact on the College's budget, especially when combined with other areas of financial decline.
According to Director of Public Safety Lisa Boudah, the decline in towing revenue this year is simply due to the fact that "people are parking where they are supposed to be parking." Middlebury students are following the rules set out by the Winter Parking Ban more closely this year than in the past. Boudah emphasized that the resulting loss in revenue is not considered negative. Public Safety is glad that students are following the parking rules, she said.
Income from long-distance telephone calls has declined steadily in the past three years. $431,509 was billed out in 2000, $370,375 in 2001 and only $269,140 in 2002. Long distance rates were recently lowered in an effort to boost income in this area. Domestic rates range from $0.10 to $0.14 per minute, while international rates range from figures only slightly higher than domestic rates to $7.12 per minute for a call to the Solomon Islands.
Efforts to raise telephone service income have been fruitless so far. Competition from alternative methods of communication has crippled the College's telephone service income. According to Assistant Treasurer Tom Corbin, the sharp decline in the use of the long-distance telephone service is due to many factors "including e-mail, calling cards, personal "800" numbers and, most recently, cell phones."
Telephone services are expensive for the College. "Today the telephone budget is $750,000 plus wages," said Corbin. "In the past, the College has used the margin on the long-distance service to pay for local calls, voice-mail, in-room phones and part of the system cost."
With an income now under $300,000 for long-distance calls, the College is forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on telephone services. "The general college budget has had to make up for the shortfall," explained Corbin.
Including the indirect costs, the College is approaching a million dollar loss from its telephone services. Increasing cell phone use appears to be the largest factor responsible for the dramatic drop in telephone service revenue. "Given the current state of the telecommunications industry," Corbin explained, "the levels of income the College saw in the 1990s are not likely to happen again."