Next year, Dartmouth students will pay the lowest tuition hike in the past 30 years to the College, bringing three terms worth of expenses to over $30,000. Heralding this as an amazing achievement, the College has published its 3.9 percent rate hike in nearly every publication it produces. The truth is that there is absolutely no justification, need or benefit in raising tuition. Last year Dartmouth made 127 million dollars in profit in a low inflation year with prospects of no inflation in the coming year. So why hike tuition with a two billion-dollar endowment and such great financial news? The Trustees and administration hiked tuition because they can.
Our parents will continue to pay out their life, because they want to see us receive the best education possible. The College has known this for the past 30 years and has used its prestige to more than triple tuition (that is in constant dollars), fatten the administration and turn Dartmouth into a country club for the best and brightest (unfortunately we don't have time to enjoy it). It is time this all changed.
College administrators claim that it takes nearly $60,000 a year per student to run Dartmouth, illustrating a glaring problem with the College's prodigious spending. When it is cheaper to send every student on a cruise for three terms, one doubts that this money is being spent wisely. Probably nobody knows where all the money is going to, but we can see much of it being wasted right in front of us. Do we really need inflated budgets for special interest groups, a president who earns $400,000 a year with a free house, a $51 million library, more administrators and bureaucrats than you can shake a stick at, unionized card swipers that make $14 an hour, janitors that make more money than many of us will right out of college and thousands of acres of land that none of us ever use? More importantly, do we really need a $2 billion endowment? Sure it is nice to have, but is it really worth our parents working years to send us through college? If you had to pay all the money yourself (as some Dartmouth students do), would you think it was worth all the perks? I would not.
Despite this wanton spending, the College still made $127 million in profit ($30,000 per student)! Last year the College would have stayed in the black even if we didn't pay a single penny in tuition. With this gargantuan amount of money being made, I propose a change in school policy that would probably shock the world and leave the Trustees shaking in their suits. Lower tuition and cut spending. It is that simple. Lowering tuition would ease the burden on the students who rack up loans and work second jobs, our parents and the alumni who get bled for every penny they have in phone-a-thons. Also, lowering tuition would raise the quality of the applicant pool. Students considering comparable schools would chose Dartmouth because of its lower tuition and commitment to keep it low. Prospectives who would receive financial aid and loans would need less of them because of the lower tuition, adding another plus in Dartmouth's corner. Thus, Dartmouth would get a smarter (not saying that we aren't smart already) and more economically diverse student body with parents that could afford retiring a few years earlier.
But we won't get any of this. Dartmouth College will continue raising tuition as long as there are parents who want the best education for their children and can afford it. The Ivy cartel will raise the price of "higher" education until even Dartmouth alumni can't afford to send their children here. I truly hope that I can send my children to Dartmouth if they want to attend, but I don't know if I will be able to. Honestly, I don't know if it will be worth it.
