With the departure of Doug Bennett and the arrival of Michael Roth this fall, the University entered a new period in its development as an institution. Already, the new administration has made important decisions regarding the University’s future, most notably in determining how to allocate financial resources in order to improve the University’s competitiveness vis-à-vis its peer institutions.
As The Argus reported in its April 4 edition (volume CXLIII, number 37), however, these decisions have not come without a hefty price tag. Due primarily to upcoming construction of the new Molecular and Life Sciences Building and President Roth’s new plan to replace loans with grants for students on financial aid, it is projected that the University will have a yearly deficit of almost $2 million beginning in 2012.
Of course, whenever questions of budget deficits and multi-million-dollar building projects come up, one question must inevitably be examined: are we spending these massive sums of money on the right things?
As I have argued in a previous column, increasing financial aid deserves to be one of the University’s top priorities, especially due to its exorbitant tuition and the correspondingly high levels of indebtedness amongst middle-class students. Increasing financial aid will not only make life much easier for current students, but it will also improve the University’s ability to attract high caliber students who are worried about college costs.
The bigger financial commitment, however, is the new sciences building, projected to cost $160 million when all is said and done. And while the building will certainly provide innumerable benefits to current science students and help to attract future students in the sciences, it is worth considering the long-term effects of such an investment on the University’s financial future.
One of the most basic economic concepts, yet one that is often overlooked in everyday life and decision-making processes, is that of opportunity cost. Put simply, when considering an option, one must take into account not only the benefits and drawbacks of that option, but also what is lost by passing up on other options. Put in the context of the current topic, we must consider not just what we can gain from the new sciences building, but also what other projects we could spend the money on, and the lost benefits that those projects would bring.
One such project that springs to mind is expanding the University’s faculty and hiring more full-time professors. This would allow departments to offer a wider variety of courses, make it easier for non-majors to take courses in other departments, and encourage developing long-standing relationships with faculty members. There are always talented visiting professors across the departments, and hiring more of them on a fulltime basis would do wonders to enrich the academic experience for students, which is ultimately the chief aim of any university.
By hiring more professors across the departments, and specifically focusing on departments where the demand for courses exceeds the supply, the University could improve its academic breadth and depth—and this would benefit all students, not just those in specific majors. The number of professors that could be hired and retained for $160 million is, quite frankly, mind-boggling.
This is not to say that the new sciences building is necessarily a bad choice but, rather, that there are other possible paths which could be equally, if not more, beneficial for the average student. Certainly, the University is well known for its science programs and has a large interest in supporting their continued success and growth, but is this really the most pressing need that it currently faces?
There is likely no foolproof way of objectively answering this question, but it clearly is worth exploring, especially now that the long-term financial ramifications are becoming clear. At the very least, there ought to be serious discussion of the alternatives, if only to ensure that when the next big decision rolls around, we are aware of what we are sacrificing.
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