In the midst of all this, I attended my Nth year college reunion (I was a bit older when I went to graduate school). Without getting into too many details, I attended a SLAC set on an idyllic campus with stately buildings, mature oak trees, and insanely low faculty turnover rates. The kind of place an impressionable young undergraduate thinks, "I want to come back here and teach Philosophy someday, or maybe English". Good luck kid!
Since I graduated, tuition+housing rates have ballooned from about 27K to 50K. At the President's Luncheon he he blathered on about increasing the endowment to provide more scholarships and such (It's always the endowment, stupid!). That's great, but the tuition rate is the real problem. In 10 more years my beloved SLAC will basically be a private college for the rich and the few poor/middle-class students able to attend will maybe get a few pennies thrown their way. Thankfully, the speech ended after about 20 minutes with some Q&A. Snarky spouse begged me to ask what faculty positions would be open next year.
A few months ago, I pondered as to where the money goes at some schools. I saw my answer first hand at my SLAC. Since I have left, almost all the academic buildings (and one enormous athletic center) have been either completely remodeled or rebuilt. They are beautiful and energy efficient and cost millions of fucking dollars. And once you build a new building and move everyone over from an old one, well no one wants to work in that old piece of shit any more. So you have to at least remodel the old building. It set off a decade-long cascade of remodels and moving and spending millions of fucking dollars.
Don't get me wrong. I love my college, I love what I learned there, and I'd apply to work there in a heartbeat (but doubt I'd get an interview). But they'd pay me peanuts while taking the undergraduates to the cleaners. I can't in good conscience give them money (if I had any) while tuition and student loan rates are skyrocketing. I might change my mind once they get these things under control. Although, I think I'd be better off throwing that money in a college savings account for any future progeny.
But that decision can wait for when I have a real job.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go make my monthly student loan payment.
Oh shit yeah. We were just saying. Where the fuck is Bison?
ReplyDeleteOr maybe it was just Cal wanting to order a buffalo burger. One of those.
Leslie K.
Hell yeah! And let me just say that I love the summer admins (You and Cal especially). Please edit any posts I might make where I get blind drunk on Irish whiskey and out some of the institutions I've interviewed at this year. They'd know who I was immediately.
DeleteAnd unlike myself, bison burgers are supposed to be tender and low in fat.
When a big donor gives a million bucks to the college, everybody thinks the building is "free." The donation won't cover operating costs, which can be $100K. Suddenly, there are "unexpected" increases in facilities costs, leading to tuition increases and cuts.
ReplyDeleteWord is that my SLAC also has a hiring freeze on. I guess I just don't understand the way budgeting works at SLACs.
DeleteWe've also been told that BIG donations are always made FOR specific renovations (people want their names on buildings and on plaques showcasing their generosity). No one donates $1 million for operating costs, which are REALLY what schools need (and what a lot of tuition goes towards).
DeleteOur library is falling down (as in it's being supported with struts or whatever they're called so it won't fall down), yet we just got a huge donation ($14 million) to help renovate our Science building. Our Science building is the most-newly renovated building on campus. It needs no overhaul. It was overhauled 4 years ago. But the money was specified to go to the Science building. The donors have said they'll pull their donation if it isn't used in the Science building. So guess where it'll go... to fancy upgrades, new artwork, a skylight and a fountain (for no reason) and smart boards in the Science building, while other buildings on campus still have overhead projectors that don't work...
And in the meantime, our library will continue to slide down on one side because no one thinks it's sexy to donate to a library.
Cynic, we can get all our science journals online so there's no need for the library. Especially when I can read them next to a fountain. Otherwise, I see your point.
DeleteHaving only stepped inside the library once a quarter (for the library orientation), I also get your point, Beaker. And really, a new fountain to rival the other two on campus will probably be the talk of the next Homecoming weekend.
Delete@CC: One problem you have is unimaginative science faculty. If some generous alum were to plunk $14 million on front of me, I could easily come up with a shopping list of laboratory equipment useful for research, much of it involving students, of course. There's no need to spend any of it on a skylight, or a fountain.
DeleteI wonder if alumni relations people factor in the resentment that alumni feel when seeing how much the campus/program/etc. has been improved and reformed since we suffered through it, not to mention how much money they're raking in from B-school slackers whose family connections and lack of ethical grounding has made them philanthropists for tax purposes.
ReplyDeleteOr is it just me?
Oh yeah, I hear that. I felt an odd mix of disgust, resentment, and rage as the President spoke. I'm in this business, and I've seen behind the curtain that hides the ugliness of perpetually abused adjuncts, naughty full professors, and wasted budgets approaching the millions. My other alumni friends don't know this, so to them the whole event was like visiting some sort of sparkly Disneyland of higher education. He just kept spouting platitudes. "Endowment! Multiculturalism! Tools for the new century!"
DeleteEveryone knows I'm on the market right now and they kept asking me - "Hey Bison, think they'll have a job for you next year?"
Nope.
But they'd gladly take my money.
If alumni can direct their donation to a specific building, why not direct it to a specific hire? Tell your friends, "yes, if you donate to create the Bison endowed chair of [whatever-it-is-you-do]." It's time to network, Bison!
DeleteOr, conversely, why can't a portion of mega-donations be directed to under-funded core programs?
DeleteI like these ideas. Too bad most of my friends chose to be broke-ass teachers, writers, adjuncts & office drones. I need some better friends I guess (think venture capitalists, actuaries, lawyers, and day traders).
DeleteSo I could maybe scrounge up $500. That would buy me what, 8 hours of an endowed chair?
All three of the colleges/universities I attended are doing this. I have donated trival amounts from time to time, but if I had any real money, they wouldn't get it unless I saw things change.
ReplyDeleteIt's worth noting part of that ballooning price is artificial inflation; NPR's Planet Money did a great episode on the math behind rising SLAC sticker prices (they also have an infographic.)
ReplyDeleteOf course, they also have the one student who's paying for all of it on loans, which speaks to how this inflation punishes students.
Thanks for the link! I'm going to listen to it right now.
DeleteI almost crapped my pants, I thought the tour at the beginning of the podcast was my SLAC! But it wasn't. Do they try to coordinate the way their campuses look or what?
DeleteI expect so? I did my undergrad at Big Southern R1, and it sounded suspiciously like the tours I overheard the student guides giving.
DeleteI was able to go to a SLAC thanks to a generous scholarship. However, even at the time I recognized that the college was partaking in this kind of ruthless inflation: jacking up tuition and then awarding 96% of the student body some kind of merit scholarship. It's the ultimate self-esteem boost, and therefore the ultimate marketing tool. Everyone who gets in gets a trophy, and everyone feels good and wanted. Everyone feels as though they're getting a $40k education for a fraction of the price .... and that they somehow earned this prize for being a really good student.
Delete@Bison: My undergraduate experience was not as congenial as yours. I went to a very expensive (even then), private R1 that thinks very highly of itself, so much so it enjoys calling itself "the Harvard of the Midwest," where I got a Big-Ten education at Ivy League prices. The faculty had no qualms about letting us undergraduates know we were "a necessary evil." What really steams me is that, if they were going to blow us off acting this way, at least they could have had the simple decency of doing some important research to have justified the attitude! But no, the faculty was riddled with deadwood: one astronomy professor who hadn't done any research in 20 years taught us in the late '80s how to develop photographic plates, the words "electronic imaging" never having passed his lips.
ReplyDeleteOf course, even from before Day 1, the university unrelentingly reminded us that it would be expecting our donations at any time. So, having been thoroughly steeped in this, and yet mindful of the quality of the education we got, about 15 years after graduation, I asked an old roommate and fellow major who'd been in many of the classes I'd had about whether we should feel an obligation to donate money.
He said: "They got more than enough of MY money the FIRST time through!"
Ever since, my conscience has been clear about alumni donations, or the lack of them they'll get from me.
I loved my little SLAC out in the cornfields, with its cinderblock dorms, mismatched architecture, and dreamy, dumpy 1940s downtown unmarred by chain stores. I chose it precisely because its campus said, "We have higher aims here than building fancy buildings." I'd been to all these glossy places and when I got to Serious Little SLAC, I turned to my dad and said, "Let's go home now. I'm going here." And I did.
ReplyDelete