FIGURES lie and liars figure. Once again out-of-state tuition is increasing, and once again President John T. Casteen III's army of overpaid beancounters has cooked up reasons why it must be done. But the numbers and explanations coming out of Madison Hall just don't add up.
Why is out-of-state tuition going up? Why has out-of-state tuition increased every year in the past decade? It can't be to keep pace with inflation. Since 1994, out-of-state tuition has gone up 31.2 percent, with an average annual increase of 5.2 percent. It has doubled since 1990. Yet the average inflation rate over the same period has been only 2.4 percent according to the Consumer Price Index.
Similarly, the tuition increase cannot be to make up for lacking state support. This, of course, is the default justification the University makes for everything it does. But the reality is that the state provides more than enough to fund the education mission of the University, and well more than Madison Hall would ever admit.
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Administrators like to say that the state provides only 13 percent of the University's operating funds. Of course this depends upon how you define the term "operating funds," or "University" for that matter. Here, as elsewhere, the similarities between Casteen and Clinton are astounding. To be accurate one must take out the Medical Center, because the hospital is a uniquely funded entity. This leaves you with the Academic Division, and shoots the level of state support to 20-25 percent.
If you want a really accurate picture of state support for academics, one must look at the cost of educating the students. This is the education and general activities portion of the University budget. When you subtract out research and pet projects that have nothing to do with educating students, a dirty little secret emerges. State support verges on 50 percent. The vast majority of the remaining 50 percent is covered by tuition and fees.
This statistic is the key to answering the question of why tuition is going up. The University says that out-of-state students are paying 133 percent of the cost of educating them. Why? The University says that it is to subsidize Virginia residents' tuition, but it isn't true. The aforementioned 50 percent statistic shows that state support is making up for the disparity between in-state and out-of-state tuition.
Instead, out-of-state students are being used as a cash cow to fund the University's empire building. Hire more administrators, build more buildings, pay people more and start more programs. This is the mantra of Madison Hall; keeping University tuition at a reasonable level doesn't fit into the equation.
The undeniable fact is that the University budget, however you spin it, has grown wildly out of proportion during the Casteen years. The number of full-time administrators has ballooned, well out-pacing faculty hires. The alphabet soup of new centers and programs mirrors the federal government in its size and scope. Nevermind that they have nothing to do with students or that it is nearly impossible to find out what many of them do.
Meanwhile, University Rector John P. Ackerly III and the rest of the go-along-get-along Board of Visitors acts as an enabler. The tuition increase sailed through last weekend's meetings without so much as a peep. Ackerly told The Cavalier Daily that when it comes to tuition increases, "Normally the administration's recommendations are held in high regard." ("Out-of-state costs rise by 5 percent," April 12). In other words, actual oversight is not part of his conception of the Board's job description. It would be too controversial, and heaven knows that no one from the West End of Richmond wants to be controversial.
The University is heading for a train wreck known as the "Carolina Effect." That is when a school raises out-of-state tuition to the point that non-residents stop coming. And then the rankings plummet begins in earnest. Obviously next year's 5 percent increase will not provoke a mass exodus, but with an administration that spends like a teenage girl at the mall, and a Board that behaves like the see-no-evil monkeys, you can bet that it won't be the last increase. But at least we have a new football stadium.
(Sam Waxman's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily.)
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