In an interview with the Wall Street Journal this March, College President Jim Yong Kim asserted that the actual annual cost of educating a Dartmouth undergraduate is approximately $100,000. For all the plush amenities and excellent professors here, it's hard to believe that all of this money roughly twice the median U.S. household income is really being spent with undergraduates in mind.
This August, the Goldwater Institute gave Dartmouth the dubious distinction of being one of only five schools that spends more on administration per student than the average university spends on each student's entire college experience. According to the Dartmouth College Fact Book, the number of non-faculty staff has grown from 2,408 in 1999 to 3,412 in 2008 a 42 percent increase. In the 2010 fiscal year, the College spent over $120 million on employee benefits more than its total revenue from tuition and fees after adjusting for student scholarships.
I don't think there wouldn't be so much bloat if students and parents had to pick up more than half of the tab. Although Dartmouth doesn't specify what portion of the $168 million it received in "Sponsored Research Grants and Contracts" had come from taxpayer pockets, it is undoubtedly a significant proportion. In 2009, the National Science Foundation alone gave out about $5.2 billion in research funding. The Department of Education distributed $3 billion in earmark grants to colleges and their administrations.
Clearly, intensive research activity brings a lot of money into college coffers, but it does little more than advance the careers of faculty members and the school's spot in the largely peer-review based U.S. News & World Report Rankings. The money rarely trickles down to the student experience, nor does it offset student tuition payments.
"The best thing that Dartmouth does is hire enough faculty to carry the teaching load without making teaching the sole occupation of the faculty," remarked economics professor Andrew Samwick earlier this month ("Samwick earns new professorship," Nov. 3).
By national historical standards, Dartmouth professors today have light teaching responsibilities. In 1960, it was not unusual for professors at mid-level, four-year schools to teach nine or more classes a year, whereas today that number is more likely to be five or six, and it's even lower for Dartmouth and our peer institutions. According to Richard Vedder, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, a similar pattern can be observed at research institutions. Colleges seeking to economize by having professors assume more traditional teaching responsibilities may endanger their accreditation. The Commission on Institutions of Higher Education requires that there be, "adequate number of faculty to assure the accomplishment of class and out-of-class responsibilities."
Undoubtedly there are many professors who effectively integrate teaching and research, but colleges should do more to reward them. As it is, the most important criterion for moving up in the ranks of academia is research output. One might argue that a school like Dartmouth has a societal obligation to support research activity, but the reality is that as important as that can be, shouldn't it be more critical that we prepare students to be the innovators and entrepreneurs of tomorrow? Even in the premier journals in which Dartmouth faculty members publish, there is plenty of rather inconsequential academic output. According to Professor Pter Jasc at the University of Hawaii, a mere 40.6 percent of the articles published in the top science and social science journals between 2002 and 2006 were ever actually cited. A count by Science magazine about two decades ago found that just 45 percent of the articles published in the 4,500 top scientific journals were cited within five years of publication.
Between 1982 and 2007, college tuition increased by an outrageous financial aid-adjusted 439 percent, and the notion that $100,000 is being spent on the seven months out of a year that a typical student spends in Hanover is absurd and troublesome. The figure suggests grave inefficiencies, and the College's seriously bloated payrolls and increasing focus on research are the first places we should look for solutions.
