Face-to-face with myself over college tuition
BY ROBERT WEISBUCH
I guess I should hate myself.
I’m both a tuition-paying college parent and a tuition- charging college president. As a parent, I gasp at the bills for my two college kids. As president of Drew University, I try to figure out how we can get by on a 4 percent tuition increase when utility and health care costs alone are rising 10 percent—before we factor in all the educational costs.
My two halves often tangle over the cost—and the cost-benefits—of college. But for all the attention paid to tuition, it’s not a very meaningful figure. While it does represent the real cost of an education, the reality is that most students and their families pay much less.
At Drew, for instance, the advertised tuition last year was about $34,000. But after we applied our grants and scholarships, the average first-year student paid $18,500. Tuition had gone up a few thousand dollars from two years earlier, but because of increases in financial aid, the average student was actually paying a few thousand less. And that’s true at many colleges and universities as we seek gifts and employ our endowments more generously to defray costs.
The parent in me counters that while this may be, colleges are also getting cheaper in a different sense—that is, becoming dishonest. Tuition is one amount, but then there are all those other costs —the fees with funny names. They can add up to several thousand additional dollars, and when you ask about it, you often get an answer that’s the polite equivalent of “We ain’t got no stinkin’ badges!”
Fees at the private Northeast liberal arts colleges last year averaged about $400 and are generally used to support student activities. But that’s not to say there aren’t colleges charging much more and using the money for other purposes. I know of a state university north of here, which will go unnamed, that’s been prevented from raising tuition by its state legislature and now routinely charges more than $6,000 for a vague academic improvement category that is simply tuition by another name. But all that is to say, be an educated consumer. Don’t go by the sticker price. Ask about average tuition, and then ask a lot of questions about all the other costs.
The back-and-forth over cost inevitably goes on, and in the process, we somehow lose sight of what's truly important—finding the school that best fits the needs of our child. What’s the educational philosophy? What programs are offered? Does the faculty work closely with students? Are class sizes large or small? Is the campus beautiful, inspiring, exciting? Does it feel right? These are the questions we should be asking.
Deciding on a college isn’t as much like buying a car as it is like falling in love. Don’t start with what you believe you can afford. Let your children start with where they believe their life will change and their dreams will be fulfilled.
A few years ago, my daughter was considering colleges and had been accepted at two fine universities—one large and one small. When she told me that she picked the smaller school with the bigger bill, I cried. But not over the cost. The school she picked happened to be my alma mater. It was where my life changed. What kind of price do you put on that?
I have watched this change in our students over and over again, nourished by what we provide but made real, and lasting, by their classmates.
Speaking of classmates, here’s one final bone of contention in the parent-president debate— isn’t it unfair that different students pay different amounts for essentially the same services? Why not just charge everyone the same price?
If we did that, half the kids—smart and talented though they are—couldn’t afford to attend. And if they were missing, it would cheat the remaining students of one of the real values of college: meeting and working with people from different social and economic backgrounds, just as students will be doing for the rest of their lives.
If we really believe that education should be a lever of democracy, if we really believe in a meritocracy, colleges must admit students on the basis of merit and then try our damnedest to make an education affordable for all of them.
The New Yorker reported last year that only 3 percent of students at selective colleges and universities came from the lowest economic quartile and 74 percent from the highest quartile. As a university leader, I can’t just mildly accept that—no American should.
Too often, students with great potential believe they can’t go to college, or they assume that their finances limit them to considering only cost, not fit. What a shame that they may not take a look at the private liberal arts colleges that offer a real, and often affordable, alternative.
As a president, I firmly believe that the cost of a liberal arts education is worth it. At colleges like Drew, in exchange for tuition, students get renowned experts working with them individually in dozens of different academic fields, nearly a hundred clubs they can join for any conceivable interest, myriad sports and recreation facilities, shelter and food (organic, locally grown, by the way), internships and a career office that not only works for them now but at any time after they graduate. They are exposed to great theater, music and art exhibits, form lasting friendships with a wonderful variety of great kids and earn degrees that unlock an amazing range of careers. And that’s before I even mention the most important values of college, two little things we call wisdom and character.
College presidents exist to give out pompous advice, so it’s probably not surprising that in the end, the president in me gets the final word. But I also realize that when the president wins, so does the parent—and, most important, the student.
Robert Weisbuch is president of Drew University and a past president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. He holds a Ph.D. in English from Yale University.
