Being a student at Northwestern this week was like being a tourist in a crowd of pickpockets. Many hands groped for our wallets and they seemed eager to relieve us of a healthy chunk of change.
First there are Associated Student Government senators who want to increase the annual Student Activities Fee from $99 to $120. Everyone wants quality student group programming on campus, right? Then there’s the Undergraduate Budget Priorities Committee, which is seeking cable in every room and wants students to pony up $121.20 a year for the new service. Everyone likes cable, right? And finally there are the administrators who decreed that tuition would increase by 4.9 percent, bringing the yearly bill for undergraduates to $27,207. Everyone wants higher tuition, right?
It all sounds great. We’ll have Dave Matthews play every quarter, MTV in our rooms and higher tuition. What could be better? But before you go out and buy a new TV, you’d better take a closer look at all those groping hands.
Under the new cable system, students won’t be able to opt out. If you don’t want TV in your room or your budget is too tight for luxuries, you’ll still have to pay the $121.20 yearly fee or move off campus. But what is less widely known is that the much-lauded cable won’t be accessible through TVs anyway. NU plans to pipe it in through the Ethernet network, which means you’ll be watching “SportsCenter” on your computer monitor, not your big screen. If you’re lucky, you might be able to find a costly adapter to connect your TV to your computer, but otherwise you’ll be stuck squinting.
Although there are problems with the proposed cable system, at least it would satisfy a clear need. The same can’t be said for the Student Activities Fee. In fact, there is already a glut of programming on campus. Many events go unattended because students have too many demands on their time. And there is no reason to believe that more money will mean better programming. The Board of Trustees raised the fee by $33 in April 1999, and we’ve seen no dramatic improvements. Why do some ASG leaders feel compelled to continuously take more money from students? It took three attempts to assemble the votes in Senate to even recommend the new increase. This is one groping hand we ought to slap away.
The tuition hike is more complicated. Tuition increases at a rate higher than inflation at most universities, and unless the jump is staggering – like the 16.9 percent NU raised its tuition in 1998 – we usually pay the bill with some grumbling but minimal protesting. We know that our tuition covers only a fraction of the cost of our educations anyway, and that running a major research university is expensive. And administrators assure us every time they increase tuition that financial aid grants also increase at the same rate.
But that logic deserves our scrutiny. When you look closer, you may find a case of fuzzy math.
If every student paid the full tuition increase, it would net NU about $9.6 million next year. That’s from 7,556 students each paying $27,207 – $1,269 more than they did this year. But administrators said the financial aid grant budget also would increase by 4.9 percent to keep up with the tuition increase.
The university distributed grants to about 50 percent of the student body this year, totalling $51 million. That means about 3,778 students could not afford tuition. Many of them also took out student loans or did work study to supplement the grants.
The promised increase in grant funds will amount to $2.5 million. But $2.5 million divided between the 3,778 students who couldn’t pay the old tuition amounts to only $661 in grants for each student to pay a bill that increased by $1,269.
In other words, after the tuition and grant increases, NU will ask students who have already maxed out to come up with $2.3 million. Where will they find that money? “oans? Work study? Grants and scholarships from outside sources?
And as if it weren’t bleak enough, this breakdown doesn’t account for all the new students who will qualify for grants because of the increased tuition. The more who do, the thinner the grant budget will be stretched. And of course, the cost of room and board is likely to increase, as well.
Administrators and financial aid officers should explain how students will absorb these new costs. Perhaps they have an easy answer, in which case they should share it with us. But regardless, they should consider how high they will allow tuition to spiral. How much is too much?
