While some universities try to have “transparent” financial report, these often are ambiguous and unclear. In the report the class analyzed in class, Trinity University reported its annual operating budget with ambiguous terms that made a considerable percentage of expenses and revenues remained vague. One of these was “auxiliary enterprises”, which was quiet out of place considering this university is a non-profit organization. I have not contacted the business office to clear up the meaning of these vague terms but I do believe these terms were made vague for a reason. What was surprising is that tuition made up a bit more than half of the income for operations. As Nelson and Watt state in page 92, there are various departments that are profitable and others that lose money. Those that lose money have to get subsidized by the university to survive. Tuition is the same for all majors, regardless if a person is majoring in philosophy or neuroscience. There are universities in other countries that have different tuition depending on the major; philosophy might be cheaper than neuroscience for example. Should American universities employ this method of setting tuition different depending on majors? After all, an economics major might not use all the expensive lab equipment that a person majoring in chemistry will use. Do you have any idea on how to make university financial reporting, especially private university statements, more transparent? I do think every student would like to see more transparency on where their high tuition money is going, and not just have terms like “auxiliary enterprises”.
I don't think that any universities have transparent financial reports at all, and even if they do, the report is probably somewhat fabricated. The truth is, the university does not want students, parents, or alumni to know exactly what it is doing with all our money. I would like to know where all my money is going, considering that Trinity keeps hiring UTSA professors to come and teach its students, regardless of the fact that we pay so much money so that we can have professors who actually know how to teach, and deserve to be teaching at good university like Trinity. If I wanted to be taught by UTSA professors, I would have gone to UTSA.
ReplyDeleteAs Daniel pointed out, not all majors cost the university the same amount of money, but they still charge the same tuition for all students. All Trinity students pay the same amount each semester whether they are taking 12 credits, or 18. This can be a good thing or a bad thing depending upon how you see it. If I am taking only four courses per semester, I am going to be upset that I am paying the same amount as someone who is taking six courses. But on the other hand, it can be a good thing too.
As Daniel also pointed out, Trinity reportedly uses tuition to cover half of the operating expenses. If this is truly the case, why is tuition so high? Why can't Trinity lower tuition and use its endowment to cover part of the operating cost? The financial report is ambiguous and probably decieving. I think Trinity needs to revise the financial report available to consider all facets of the university in detail so that those interested can actually find correct information. I don't know how we can insure the information is correct, however. Perhaps Trinity should allow its business students to break down the budget and make the financial report. In that case the report would probably be more correct considering students have no reason to lie about where Trinity is spending their tuition money.
~Alexa