Op-Ed Tuition, a necessary extravagance?

Author: David Murphy Haglund

I am absolutely sick of hearing College officials justify exorbitant tuition hikes with the argument that "[tuition] covers just 63 percent of the actual cost of an education at Middlebury." I find the figure hard to believe prima facie, but since I don't have access to the statistics, I will leave that point aside. My point here is that much of the spending that goes on is absolutely unnecessary and should be halted.

I believe a primary reason costs at Middlebury are spiraling out of control is that the College as a whole, and especially the departments and subgroups which comprise it, expects tuition to continually go up. Thus, every year groups under the college umbrella raise their own spending budgets. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of athletic teams, artistic productions, Commons and academic departments that receive money from the mandatory student fees to spend. The total spent for strictly non-academic endeavors alone must be staggering.

An analogy could be made to the spending habits of the U.S. Federal Government. Similar to the component parts of that institution, at Middlebury each individual subgroup has an incentive to spend 100 perccent of its budget ever year, so that it can request even more the next year rather than face a cut.

I can attest from my days at Midd that we lived in the lap of luxury. Preposterous conditions. Free beer on Thursdays, $6,000+ parties hosted by Commons on a quasi-weekly basis, Commons' offices purchasing hundreds of DVDs at a time ... I could go on, but I think many students realize just how much money is spent from mandatory student fees. But how much of this is necessary?

I think it would be easy to make drastic savings without compromising the quality of the education or even living standards. The college could easily set up an auditor post to supervise how money is being spent by sub-college entities, and then report on it. I am confident that such a report would reveal absolutely shocking figures of sheer waste, and with any luck prompt a tightening of the purses that would benefit all students. Each group's leadership would raise a fuss, but the average student - and prospective student - would be given some real relief. Education standards need not suffer. Living standards need not suffer. We could easily make savings by eliminating the absurdity of what is essentially free money for college-funded organizations.

Given that inflation has been running at about two percent for the last ten years, while tuition at elite institutions is rising at least five percent pro annum, it seems obvious to me that elite colleges like Middlebury will soon price themselves out of range for many families. Even given increased need-based aid, the simple "sticker-shock" of seeing a $50,000+ price would be sure to discourage many qualified applicants. This would be tragic.

David Haglund is a 2006 graduate writing from Vienna, Austria.