> > The listed website will give you information about the recently announced > > tuition increase. You can also share this with other staff and students. > > http://www.rpi.edu/web/Campus.News/feb_02/special_edition/ I saw this yesterday [it was in one of the #RPIs]. I find it sad if the Board of Trustees believe that we can become a premier Institute of Higher Learning just by raising the economic barrier of entry. When considering the Top 20 schools in US News and Reports "Best Undergraduate Engineering Programs with Ph.D. Programs" for 2002, Rensselaer (who is in a three way tie for #17 with a score of 3.9/5.0) is joined by nine other private schools, and 14 public schools. Information for these Private Schools are published below: Rank School Tuition Room & Board Total 1 MIT $26,960 $7,500 $34,460 2 Stanford $25,917 $8,305 $34,223 4 CIT $21,120 $6,543 $27,643 7 CMU $24,022 $7,264 $31,286 Cornell $26,062 $8,552 $34,614 11 Princeton $26,160 $7,583 $33,743 14 Johns Hopkins $26,710 $8,506 $35,216 Northwestern $25,839 $7,776 $33,615 17 RPI $25,555 $8,552 $34,107 20 Rice $16,835 $7,200 $24,035 Mean: $32,294.20 *These figures are for undergraduate rankings. --source: http://www.usnews.com/ Furthermore, of these schools, eight of them are in the top 21 "Best Values: National Universities--Doctoral" rankings which is calculated based on: 1. Ratio of quality to price. A school's ranking its overall score in the America's Best Colleges survey was divided by the cost to a student receiving an average grant meeting financial need. The higher the ratio of quality rank to the discounted cost, the better the value. 2. Percentage of all undergraduates receiving grants meeting financial need during the 2000-2001 year. 3. Average discount: percentage of a school's 2000-2001 total costs (tuition, room and board, fees, books, and otehr expenses) covered by the average need-based grant to undergraduates. . . ---source: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/dollars/rankings/aboutbv.htm Of the schools not in the top 21, Carnegie Mellon University is #31, and we are the last of the ten, just making the list by placing #42, well behind the bulk of our "peer institutions". The goal of a private college is to make money. This is how they stay in business, and this in turn supports their students by attaining a certain level of prestiege with age. However, one must be careful that the students best interests are indeed in the forefront of the minds of those in charge, and that they are aware of certain situations. By increasing tuition, the Institute is becoming ever more so selective about whom they may enroll: only those who may afford the financial cost of entry. Sometimes this increase in financial selectivity is necessary, unfortunately. The "cost of providing a world-class technological education" may indeed by rising, but should the cost at Rensselaer increase at ever higher rates? Arguably, the "Costs Remain Competitive" says the article, and continues by saying "the cost of Rensselaer education compares well with that of peer institutions. When tution rates are set at other private research univerisities the cost of tuition at Rensselaer is expected to remain below that of MIT, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, and other premier schools." Yet this is misleading, or at least attempts to be. Though the the statement is about the future, if we look at the previous year, we notice taht the three schools mentioned are ranked substantially higher than R.P.I--especially when considering graduate engineering schools (MIT is #1, Carnegie Mellon and Cornel #8 and #9 respectively compared to #25 R.P.I) and undergraduate schools in total (MIT, Cornell, and CMU are #5, #14, and $23 respectively -- R.P.I. is tied for last in the Top 50 at #48 with four others). Moreover, none of these schools were substantially more expensive than R.P.I. -- Cornell was $507 more after room and board, M.I.T. was less than $400 more, and Carnegie Mellon was about $2,900 cheaper -- and these figures do not even include the mandatory laptop for incoming students which, when the cost is averaged over four years, actually makes R.P.I. the most expensive with the possible exception of Cornell (but not by much). One does not make itself more attractive to potential students by increasing tuition to a level above, or to a level so near as to make it irrelevant, the costs of schools which are traditionally more prestigious. Perhaps the there is something else that results in higher costs at this Institute? The article compares us to "other private research universitites" -- perhaps we spend more on research than the others? Massachusetts Institute of Technology spent $178,000,000 on research expenditures during the 1999-2000 F.Y., which was approximately $532,900 per faculty member. Carnegie Mellon University only spent about $91,000,000 which meant that its faculty got about $551,500 each. Cornell spent the least, and decided to be different by not releasing a round number. They spent $82,485,474 on research, giving their faculty an average of $568,900. Now, realizing that R.P.I. is nowhere near the size of these other schools, it is not surprising that we spent only half as much as Cornell: $41,325,000. Certainly, our small size results in at least an equitable amount for each member of the faculty though, right? On average, only $379,100 were made available. Obviously, the extra money is not being made available to the faculty for research, as they often like to point out in classes. Perhaps something else peculiar to the Institute then? Location perhaps? Could it be that cost of living in the Capital District is so high that Rensselaer can rationalize higher tuition in order to cover its overdue mortgage? Yes, I realize this hypothetical situation is an absurdity, but perhaps we are really being given a bargain in the Room and Board part of our total cost. We pay as much as our N.Y. neighbor, Cornell, and $1000 more than each of M.I.T. and C.M.U. Cost of living in Ithica is only slightly more than here, so while we are not getting much of a deal, we aren't getting taken advantage of either, it seems. Cost of living in Pittsburgh is in between that of here and that of Ithica, so things stop looking so nice when we realize that C.M.U. charges $1000 less. Cost of living in Boston is 189% that of Albany--yet M.I.T. also charges significantly less. What else could result in this "growing cost of providing a world-class technological education at Rensselaer?" When I first started looking at colleges, one of the highlights of the the R.P.I. tour were the computer labs--"one in every dorm." The mixture of Unix boxes and PCs were there so that anybody could use them for school work, or print something out without having to walk very far--because, as it was pointed out, it snows a lot up here-- or bring their own printer. Last year, I had to walk to Warren Hall to find the last remaining computer lab in the dorms. I know none of the Freshman dorms have them--replaced by their laptops. This year, all that remains is a printer. How useful is this printer? Most people on campus probably do not know they can print to it, and are thus forced to walk to the VCC. Those who knew about it, were not allowed into the building to get their printouts for a large part of last semester. "But nobody needs them anymore--they have their laptops!" Without digressing too much, these labs are in fact required not only for computer science courses, but other courses which require students to run special software which wasn't included in their "one size fits all" laptops. Though the Institute tries to standardize on one platform, it is obvious that the schools within the Institute are unable to do this. EMACs, Architecture, and other divisions of the Institute are screaming for Apple computers which have long been what their professions requires. Many research projects as well as classes--including those outside of computer science--rely on the use of Unix machines running X servers. Whith the disappearncy of the computer labs throughout campus, and the obvious lack of Unix installed on laptops as well as lack of a Windows X server licensed, Rensselaer has once again hurt its students, and pushed more financial burden--mandatory laptops--upon the students while removing systems which were necessary for them to successfully function in this scholarly environment. Compare this to our "peer institute" M.I.T., which has, almost everywhere you look, huge multi-platform computer labs. It is increasingly more aparent that the Institute is often acting less and less in the students favor, and worse yet, attempting to mislead them. Promising prospective students computing labs and printers so that the financialy troubled do not have to purchase them themselves, and then taking them away is just the tip of the iceberg. Blatant falsification in press releases is an unfortunate aspect of the "professional" world--but it only serves to alieanate a university from its students in the academic world. Where exactly are the "work centers with fax machines, copiers and phones" in barton, anyway? < http://www.rpi.edu/web/News/press_releases/2000/princeton.html >