Money mentality causes debt, sacrifices quality students
Letter to the editor
Like hundreds of my fellow students probably did, I received a half-joking, half-scared e-mail from my father the day he got Father Malloy's letter in the mail regarding the tuition increase. The lowest percentage increase of tuition in two decades, huh? Is that supposed to make us feel comforted?
But the real issue isn't with the letter. It's with the University's refusal to freeze tuition (or God forbid) lower it. If it is true that we did increase our net assets by $259.3 million and have the luxury of a $30 million budget surplus, why do so many students face the possibility of not returning next year? Friday's Observer article about the budget surplus indicated that in order to attract the brightest students to Notre Dame, we need to continue to increase spending on technology and infrastructure. But are we that asinine to assume that the best high school seniors in the country are the ones whose parents can afford Notre Dame's skyrocketing costs?
The bottom line is this: Notre Dame refuses to halt tuition increase because they assume that less expensive equals less equality. Rice University, which is ranked higher than Notre Dame in most U.S. News and Report rankings (14th to 19th), tops us out at just over $21,000 a year. CalTech, this year's No. 1-ranked school in the nation, is cheaper than Notre Dame as well. But because Harvard is $32,000 a year, we feel that we have to be too. This keeps us elite.
This mentality not only drives hundreds of top students from Notre Dame every year, but also puts students here so far in debt that they end up paying out much more for much longer than they can afford to.
I'm not blaming the Financial Aid Office — they have the unenviable task of fairly allocating what funds they are given to work with. But if private donations fund so much of our building costs, why can't we afford to divert more money to Financial Aid? Next time you visit one of the many new immaculate buildings on campus, ask yourself what's most important to our administration.
Hey ND, thanks for paying your tuition.
Grant Gholson
Sophomore
Keenan Hall
April 29, 2000
All Viewpoint Stories for Monday, May 1, 2000
