Students angry over tuition hikes should remember that tuition is only indirectly related to the cost of a school. At most schools, few people pay tuition; they get merit awards, income-based grants, and federal loans that our (supposedly bloated) federal government graciously subsidizes in most cases. I’ve been to schools that cost $25 thousand in tuition and known students who not only had all of that, plus meals and housing, paid for by the school in an income-based grant but who had a work study job on top of this that provided them spending money. Between my brother’s and my own education, my parents have seen financial aid reports from dozens of schools, and they’ve realized exactly this: a school with seemingly impossibly high tuition (say $30K) might give grants and loans that pay for everything, while a school with seemingly low tuition (say $4K) might offer no grants and less loans, making paying for tuition nearly impossible. American universities are accountable to our roughly capitalistic system, but they give their students a kind of socialistic microcosm in which anyone, regardless of income, can afford college at some school.

The reality is that, so long as money raised by tuition increases is funneled into financial aid, a tuition increase often means that someone who’s brilliant, who’s done well in school or has high test scores, will actually pay less in tuition. A tuition increase often means that a poor black kid can get a grant based on low income. This is redistribution of money, an egalitarian system that helps those who need help and those who deserve it based on high grades or scores, their circumstances, or their ability to write essays. A college’s price tag means little; it’s the negotiation with financial aid that determines what’s paid at the register.

But a higher tuition does mean something. It means that a rich kid without exceptional credentials will pay more -- and this is a good thing, as they can afford to do so, and their cost helps to give opportunities, even whole lives not otherwise possible, to those more deserving and those who are poorer. This is a meritocracy, this is utopian, and this should be a goal of any school.

But it should also be remembered that even full tuition doesn’t reflect the real cost of a school. The actual cost of educating a single person for four years as a resident is in the millions of dollars. Tuition does not reflect the real costs of the service received, which includes buildings and their maintenance, pay not only for faculty but for the massive staff of academic departments, of recreation centers, of health services, and of those who keep buildings clean and functional. At private colleges, this added cost is paid by investments and donations. At public colleges, donations are augmented by massive amounts of money budgeted by the state, paid for by taxpayers. The fact is that any tuition in this country is a great deal, never reflecting the cost of the service that one is supposedly “buying.”

If you want to look at education as a capitalistic endeavor, pretend a college is a shoe company. But it’s a shoe company selling its shoes below cost. People may -- and will -- bitch about the price of its shoes, but the actual cost of the shoes are subsidized by the government, by that corporation’s investments, and by donations. So, yes, it might be annoying that the price of Nike shoes rose from $3.00 to $3.50 -- but you’ve got to remember that, as high as tuition might seem, tuition never reflects the cost of education.

Is there waste that could be used to lower the cost of tuition? Yes, and there is at any school. As there is at any company. It’s a sad fact that the number of administrators has boomed at colleges all around the country. And that searches, now commonplace, to find these administrators, often outsourced to firms that specialize in this, can themselves cost six figures. I don’t like this fact either, and I’d like it to change. But it’s the way things are done today, and there are reasons for it: people, including government agencies, expect administrators at more and more specialized levels, and those administrators don’t expect to have a job that at other schools would be done by two or three people. I wish they did, but this is a fact of life.

There’s an irony in the fact that students think “it’s all about the Benjamins,” that they are buying an education that they presume will help get them a job so they can make more money. Students are rightly aware that paying more for a school means that they can do less outside of school; that they can buy less CDs, less DVDs, and that their quality of life is lessened. But the irony is that schools work the same way: more money means the ability to hire more people, to offer more financial aid, to offer more recreation, more study abroad opportunities, to improve the campus and the dorms, to bring more famous speakers to the campus and to offer more workshops for students. Not only can what a student pays actually drop due to a tuition hike, but a student’s quality of life might improve as well: their college might, with the extra money, bring in a professional in their chosen career, giving that student a firm understanding of how to succeed after college. Think of what this could mean for that student. Think of the possibilities.

Of course, an administration has to spend the money in the right ways; it has to prioritize. I’m concerned that administrators don’t focus enough on academics, on hiring more faculty with more specializations, on lowing class size so students have a more intimate and individualized education, on increasing course offerings, and on giving those faculty low enough course loads to let them research and thus improve their and their school’s reputation. These are absolutely crucial even if the university looks like a wasteland on unkept grass and broken concrete. But a nice living environment is important for education too; students and faculty don’t need to be demoralized by ugly, old buildings covered in litter and grime. Given the money, a university can not only make its cost to students more based on merit, but it can make being on campus a relatively blissful experience; it can make its class sizes smaller and its course offerings greater.

I was at a small private school that had introductory classes with no more than 20 students, where faculty taught two classes per term and could afford the time to focus on those few students they had, reading their papers meticulously and knowing every student in their courses. The same school had free health and counseling services; free printing at their many computer labs; a number of awards with cash prizes that rewarded you when you did something really well; frequent get-togethers in various departments that included free food and drinks; frequent speakers who were brought to campus at catered events complete with free wine; trips off-campus to places as far away as Canada to see plays or opera or just to learn in a different environment; a large library well-staffed without late fees and with friendly, helpful people, complete with video lounges and reading lounges with leather upholstery; dorms with pianos and computer lounges; and buildings that all looked clean and new. Focusing on class was a lot easier without worrying about whether I had the cash to put on a card that would pay for printing a paper; none of those trivial, mundane concerns mattered. Learning was a lot more fun when you knew your professors and they paid you and your writing the attention it deserved. Going to the library was a fun experience. It was heaven. The school’s tuition was about $25K per year, though no one but the rich students paid that; most people took out a lot in loans and had the rest paid for by income-based grants.

It’s true that schools can get more money from other sources, including the securing of donations (a time-consuming process that often only breaks even because of the costs involved in staffing an office to court donors). But (it’s been proven to my satisfaction that) the #1 thing that a school can do to improve itself is to raise tuition. It can be quickly implemented, and it has the added advantage of improving a school’s reputation almost automatically. The sad fact is that, even if half of tuition is kicked back to students in grants, a high tuition looks good in the wider world: people assume, not without reason, that your education was better.

The perfect college would have a fantastically high tuition -- a tuition so high that only multi-millionaires could afford to pay it. And multi-millionaires would be accepted easily, not only because their money helped pay for everyone else but because all students would make friends and establish contacts in high places. Financial aid would be merit- and income-based, giving people great grants if they had high scores, wrote well, had a record of community involvement, or had high grades. A smart but dirt poor kid would get a free ride. Foreign students would be treated like domestic students, with the institution providing the loans the government otherwise would, adding to the diversity of the campus. And the college itself would have no classes over twenty students, a plethora of teachers and course offerings, frequent guest speakers and catered parties that help establish community as people socialize together, tons of awards for exceptional students and faculty so that greatness is rewarded, opportunities to study abroad and visit other places, a library that was a joy to be in, and a campus on which almost everything was free.

This should be the eventual goal of all serious colleges, and the best way to get there is for a school to get more money -- which is, after all and however sadly, what makes it all possible. The sad fact is that a raise in tuition, even if utterly misspent, will allow the next administration the financial possibilities that the previous one lacked -- and this should be remembered in the present climate of frequent administrative turnover.

We must reexamine our academic priorities. Instead of focusing on tuition, we should focus on financial aid. Instead of priding ourselves on admitting disadvantaged students, we should question what kind of educational experience they are getting. Instead of assuming that a degree will open up opportunities and trying to make that degree as accessible as it can be, we should focus on the opportunities that a college provides its students while enrolled -- which more directly correlates with future success.

And in any examination of an academic institution's direction, we must remember that students don't always know what's best for them -- that's why we have academic requirements. And we must also remember that faculty can be resistant to, if not antagonistic towards, anything that seems to threaten their privileges.

YOUR ASSIGNMENT THIS WEEK

Sorry that this column is late. (I'm actually only three days late, though I did take a week off at the beginning of the month.) I've been wrestling with what I consider a major column that will hopefully be completed soon. Sometimes a column comes quickly; other times, one takes many weeks. I hope to make up for any lateness, if response to "Apollonian Bacchanalia" continues to be good, by putting out multiple columns in future weeks.

The essay "W - a - l - d - e - n," a large number of words by "T - h - o - r - e - a - u" has been added and is very much worth checking out. As always, many small updates have occurred within The Continuity Pages. Many graphics have been added to the From Hell page and the Alan Moore Miscellany. Hits to this website are increasing, with an unexpected boost at the beginning of the month. Thanks for all those who have visited and helped to make this site a success.

This week, your assignment is just to read Thoreau's Walden and my essay on it.