James W. Frick once remarked: “Don’t tell me where your priorities are. Show me where you spend your money and I’ll tell you what they are.”
Taking his advice to heart, I looked into the fiscal reports Creighton discloses to the public each year. I was curious about Creighton’s allocation of financial resources, especially during a time when student tuition is at an all-time high. With talk of doubling the endowment and the seemingly limitless physical growth of the campus, I wanted to explore the extent to which we were also increasing our academic resources.
I worked with the reports from 2002 to 2007 that can be found in the reference section at Reinert. Before continuing, however, I must admit that I am not an accounting major. If some of my conclusions are incomplete, I hope that this article might spark dialogue with those who have access to better information. I have assembled a more thorough document explaining my findings, and I am willing to e-mail it to any interested parties.
In my research, two sets of figures leapt out at me. The first: from 2002 to 2007, the amount of money spent on operating Reinert Alumni Library increased by about 30 percent while the expenditures on operating the men’s basketball team increased by about 160 percent. And the second: the amount of revenue generated by tuition in the College of Arts & Sciences increased by 74 percent, but the College’s operating expenditures only increased by 42 percent.
Lest my argument be (yet again) misconstrued as anti-athletic, let me say that I have no problem with the growth of the basketball program. What I am concerned about is that we are not matching this growth with the library’s operating budget. These figures might explain why I can attend a men’s basketball game for free, but I have to pay a fee every time I request an interlibrary loan when working on research projects. Increasing the library’s holdings might help bridge this gap.
The second set of statistics indicates that CCAS continues to take in more revenue, but actually gets to spend less of it. This bodes poorly for the budgets of its academic departments, especially Fine & Performing Arts. For students, it means that we have to pay to watch theatrical productions in the Lied Center and this found me missing Love’s Labour’s Lost last month. Are ticket sales used to generate funds for the Arts Department? If so, returning more of the money generated by tuition might reduce the need to charge an admittance fee.
University education is unique in the United States because we are enamored with the “college experience.” For American students, college is not so much an education as it is a life stage, less academic and more holistic. This has both pros and cons. One benefit is that we have access to incredible facilities, topflight technology and exciting sporting events. But to the canon of the college experience I believe we should add additional academic and cultural enterprises. There are countless opportunities for doing so we need only examine where our stated priorities and budgeted monies seem to be at odds with one another.
Josh Potter, Arts & Sciences senior