Santa Clara tuition is costly investment

By Joseph O'Brien, Neeraj Ahuja, Brian Traglio, William Boenig

Have you ever wondered how the school spends all that money that you and your family pay in tuition? Surely you know that it goes to paying the professors and to the upkeep of the grounds, but do you really know how much goes to whom?

We all know how much it costs to come here; we know about the sacrifices that are made, the checks in the mail, and that ugly FAFSA form. We know it's expensive but we're confident that it is a price worth paying because most of us believe in a Santa Clara education. However, have you ever really taken the time to give it a second thought? With the help of the Vice-Provost's office and a little math, we'd like to tell you a little more about the financing of your Santa Clara University education, just so you know where you money goes.

Santa Clara is a $200,000,000 business. That's right: two hundred million dollars. If this were a corporation, it would have made one of those lists in Forbes Magazine as one of the fastest growing companies in America, as total revenue grew from $159 million last year to this year's expected $206 million. That's an increase of 30 percent. Not bad for being in the region of the country hit hardest by our current economic downturn. Most of this revenue comes from our tuition dollars, of course, with undergrads paying about $22,500 each and grad students paying their various per-unit costs.

So we know that this is big money here, but where does it all go? The University's expenditures are broken down in this year's budget into six major categories.

Labor costs account for the lion's share of Santa Clara's expenses, approximately $104 million dollars or 54 percent of the school's budget. The school spends $42 million on financial aid and over $13 million dollars on the library and maintaining our school's technology resources.

Each of the school's academic departments shares one large cost pool for operating expenses including the physical materials used for instruction such as photocopies and overheads as well as sending professors to conferences and doing the office work that students may not ordinarily see. This cost pool, along with other activities that sustain the entire University such as taxes, utilities, and insurance, makes up the general Operating Expense, a cost of over $35 million.

The last two categories are smaller, covering the repayment of debt and other miscellaneous expenses that may spontaneously occur. When you add all that together, the university is budgeted to spend over $190 million this year, an increase of $36 million or 23 percent from last year.

All of those numbers in aggregate form are quite intimidating, and the average student has no frame of reference for them. A brief look into how tuition breaks down on a day-to-day basis may be more useful to all of you. Here are some rough figures based on an average course load and layout: for the average freshman or sophomore, each class period costs you about $73. For a junior or senior, the figure rises to about $103 dollars per class meeting. Try to remember that next time you doze off in the middle of someone's lecture on a harsh Monday morning. As far as housing goes, the statements from Walsh Administration have housing costs totaling upwards of $9000. If you subtract the thousand dollars that goes to the food plan, it costs a student about $8000 to live on campus each school year. That comes down to about $35 per night to share your room with a stranger.

So tomorrow morning when it's time for class, leave a little earlier and take the scenic route. Enjoy the newly planted flowers, admire the buildings, and stay awake in class! Pick out all the things your tuition money might have paid for � you just might appreciate them that much more. And if you remember one thing from your incoming student orientation, remember that the palm trees on Palm Drive cost ten grand each.