On March 9, the College budget was approved by the Board of Trustees with a 2.9 percent increase in tuition. I find it startling that this has been the lowest tuition increase since 1977 — not counting the last fiscal year, which also saw a 2.9 percent increase. Dean of admissions and financial aid Maria Laskaris stated, “I think it sends a really strong message that we are committed to controlling costs for families.”
Perhaps the elephant in the room, though, is the reality that Dartmouth is exorbitantly expensive. A price tag of $63,744 probably doesn’t send much of a message to families aside from a chagrinned gasp that a college could ask for such an astronomical sum. In fact, despite the College’s relative isolation, which should make many components of operation less expensive than peer institutions located in cities that have higher costs of living, Dartmouth consistently hovers around the seventh or eighth most expensive college in the United States. With more than 4,500 institutions of higher education the United States, that makes Dartmouth more expensive than 99 percent of them. We might also consider that while the annual increases in tuition over the last five years have been 5.9 percent, 4.8 percent, 3.8 percent, 2.9 percent and now 2.9 percent again, the annual rates of inflation in the U.S. have been 1.5 percent, 3 percent, 1.7 percent, 1.5 percent and .8 percent, respectively. The latest inflation data for the U.S. actually indicate deflation this year, or falling prices.
Although Dartmouth often offers generous financial aid, Nicole Simineri ’17 raised several excellent points in her March 10 column “An Arm and a Leg” on why financial aid is often inadequate. Students with financial aid packages still face burdens such as loans and work-study to cover the high cost of Dartmouth. Simineri correctly points out that the 6.6 percent increase in the budget for financial aid is hardly an excuse for the tremendous cost of attending the College. Across the board, a Dartmouth education still puts a serious financial strain on students and their families.
While I praise College President Phil Hanlon’s efforts to minimize the rate of tuition increases, I find the commitment that Dartmouth purports to have to “controlling costs” somewhat laughable. A change to the pattern of tuition increases that outstrip the inflation rate has been long overdue, but the recent focus on controlling costs rings somewhat hollow when one considers that the College’s slightly reduced rates of tuition increase are reflective of a broader national trend. The bigger picture is that for the last few years, annual increases in tuition at all U.S. universities have generally reached historic 30-year lows, respective to each institution. Dartmouth is not exceptional or a “leader” by raising its exorbitant tuition to just a slightly more exorbitant level than before.
If the College really wanted to stand out and be a leader, administrators would work harder to create a more realistic operating budget and then hold tuition at a fixed rate — or even reduce tuition. There is no reason why a college the size of Dartmouth in rural New Hampshire should have an operating budget of over one billion dollars. To anyone that might dismiss such a drastic reduction in tuition as infeasible, I would point out that we have already seen the rate of tuition increase drop from 5.9 percent to 2.9 percent in just five years. The College should continue this trend if it wants to follow through on its self-proclaimed commitment to making higher education more affordable.
U.S. spending on health care and the precipitous increases in costs which preceded the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010 are eclipsed by only one sector of the economy — tertiary education. If campus leaders, as the heads of institutions meant to serve the public, are not strong enough to rein in costs on their own, then perhaps it is time for Congress to turn its eye to U.S. colleges and universities.
