According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, energy prices have more than doubled in real terms since 1985; medical costs have more than tripled in that same time frame. The pressure these rising costs put on America’s wallets has garnered a lot of attention and outrage. That’s nothing compared to the cost of college, which has risen by more than 400 percent in that time.
It’s well known that college costs have become ridiculous, but have you ever considered just why the University is charging you so much? The short answer: because they can. The longer answer is that for many people, the quality of a college is measured by how much it costs. The better quality education a college is perceived to provide, the more it can charge. This leads to a cycle of rising prices not unlike what we saw with the housing boom. As nonprofit entities, the colleges will then spend most if not all the money they have. Increased spending means the need for more money – I think you can see where this is going.
Many professors and administrators will defend these rising costs by saying it’s needed to provide a high quality education for students. I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but colleges don’t care about the students, they care about their own prestige. In a study of spending at nearly 2,000 public and private schools over 18 years, researchers for the Delta Cost Project found that the percentage of operating expenses going to classroom instruction (mainly professor salaries and benefits) accounted for 34% to 44% of spending - and those percentages actually fell over the period reviewed. For you Obama voters, that’s less than half.
Where is the rest of that money going? Well, if you walk around campus, you’re sure to see plenty of enormous wastes of money – an arch in front of the union that serves no real purpose, a new multicultural center that won’t provide anything of any real value (unless you count a new office for Tim Alvarez), the rec center looking to leave the ROTC program homeless by taking over the Military and Naval Science building to put in a few more treadmills, and the purchase of the state fair grounds to allow for more research facilities that will do little or nothing to provide students with a better education. Somebody has to pay for these things, and while the alumni may help pay for some, the burden to pay for the rest falls on you, whether you like it or not. Meanwhile the University has over $1.5 billion in its endowment, tax-free. That’s enough to give every student roughly $60,000. In other words, there is enough money in the University’s endowment to put every single currently enrolled student through school absolutely free and still have plenty left over.
The University often pays lip service to concerns over rising college costs, but when is the last time they actually did anything about it? If it is such a concern, why don’t they use their endowment money instead of raping the students? Why don’t they cut unnecessary spending? Why don’t the administrators and regents take pay cuts so more students can afford to come to Nebraska? Because your education is far from their top priority. Much like the government, universities expect everyone to find a way get by with less – everyone except them.
Students and parents alike need to hold these bureaucrats accountable. We’re paying their salaries; they work for us.
[Written by Andrew Lacy, a Broadcasting major at UNL]
[The paper version has Andrew Lacy listed as Sports Journalism, a major not even offered at UNL. Pardon the error. ---Editor]
December 1, 2008
The University Doesn't Care About You
Posted by Code Walrus at 11:58 PM
Labels: Andrew Lacy
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3 comments:
You do realize the money for the Arch was donated by alumni specifically for building a memorial, right?
Correction: That's true, there was no student money used in building the arch (though I still consider it a waste of money). It has also been brought to my attention that the rec center has pretty much dropped efforts to acquire the M&N building. That was my mistake, and I promise to be more careful in the future.
UNL Campus Researcher says:
"more research facilities that will do little or nothing to provide students with a better education"
Saying that research does little to nothing for the education of students is wrong, dead wrong. A great deal of the learning process for undergraduate science majors is done in the lab of research projects. I would be just as justified saying "spending more money on library facilities which would do nothing to help educate students" because as a scientist I hardly ever used the library.
I know what your getting at with your article, but hyperbole and error are the poison for making people sympathetic to your cause. (And a cursory read of your initial issue here shows a great deal of hyperbole and error.)
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