By Russell T. Sharpe. The following exerpts I found most interesting. The bolding is text I am particularly highlighting.
“The American college is not operated for profit. It has always kept its charges down to the lowest possible level, setting a tuition rate which, together with income from endowments, would meet operating expenses. Money from room rents has been used to offset fixed charges, property depreciation, and maintenance. Meals in dining halls have been served at cost. This leaves no margin of profit and automatically prevents a sweeping reduction in student expenses without seriously jeopardizing the solvency of the college or impairing the scope and efficiency of its work.
Few would care to see the integrity of our educational institutions thus sacrificed, no matter how worthy the cause. There are four ways in which students could be given more financial aid: 1) by increasing the number and size of scholarships and loan funds, 2) by establishing cooperative enterprises, 3) by finding more jobs for needy men, and 4) by creating positions for students within the college.
Unfortunately, each of these possibilities is hedged with practical difficulties. The generosity of friends and alumni has enabled the colleges to build up large scholarship and loan funds which yield millions of dollars annually to deserving and high-ranking students. Although these funds will undoubtedly grow as time goes on and new donors contribute, their growth will be slow, and, in periods of financial drought, may be halted altogether. Even if additional gifts were received during depressions, they could hardly compensate for the inevitable drop in income from the stocks and bonds in which the scholarship funds are in vested. Although there may some day be scholarships for all who need and deserve them, that day is far off.
Meanwhile some assistance might be rendered by establishing cooperative merchandising agencies, rooming houses, and restaurants. In many colleges for women and in a few for men, such plans have already proved successful. But whether it will be wise, from the point of view both of the individual and of the college, to institute cooperative endeavors on a large scale is perhaps questionable.
Many colleges have developed theories of education which call for the grouping of a representative cross-section of the undergraduates in a single dormitory. To segregate the needy students in cooperative houses and to feed them in cooperative restaurants would defeat this purpose, and might, in addition, breed a class consciousness which is alien to American ideals. Except for this objection, which, of course, varies in importance according to the educational theories in vogue at different colleges, cooperative enterprises seem to offer at least a partial solution to the financial problems of a limited number of students.
The only remaining expedient is to discover or create additional jobs, either inside the college walls or with out. If this could be done on a large enough scale, it would solve the difficulty, but it would not alleviate the burden of overwork which even now sits heavily upon too many students. On the contrary, it might increase the number of men who are getting little from college because they must spend all their spare time earning a living. Since students must attend classes, they can work only at certain times. This automatically circumscribes the field of possible employment. Part-time work is confined chiefly to waiting on table, chauffeuring, doing chores, supervising playgrounds, reading, translating, ushering, tutoring, operating switchboards, and direct selling. In days of adversity these jobs contract sharply; jobs disappear and unemployed men with dependents are given work which was once allotted to students. Many placement officers are now convinced, on the basis of careful study and experience, that even in prosperous eras the boundaries of opportunity will not be extensive enough to encompass all students who seek to find shelter within them.
One hope, then, remains — the creation of jobs within the college itself. Waiting on table, ushering, taking tickets at games and concerts, tutoring, doing clerical or secretarial work for members of the faculty or for other students, proctoring, janitoring, working on the college grounds — all these offer work to students without seriously interfering with their academic achievement or interrupting their normal college life. Some colleges have lately set aside large sums for the creation of additional jobs.
There are great advantages in this kind of employment. The employer is sympathetic, the work can be properly controlled and allocated, need and earnings can be more nearly equated, work hours more easily adjusted to class schedules, student interests and abilities taken into consideration, and stability assured. But here again limits are inevitable. Some positions students cannot fill because of inexperience or lack of time. Funds to finance specially created jobs are hard to obtain even when economic conditions are good. It is almost impossible for the average college to supply enough work within its walls to adjust the two-to-one difference in ratio which has long existed between students’ needs and their actual earnings.
If, then, the level of financial aid cannot be raised to the level of need, if the burden of worry and overwork which so many students are carrying to-day is to be lightened, the volume of need must be reduced. There is only one way in which this can be done, and that is by limiting the number of needy men admitted to college.
Remember, too, that many applicants, particularly those who come from families without intellectual background, enter the liberal arts college hoping thereby to improve their chances of success in business, not realizing that such a college will give them little practical training. A vocational school or a state university would have served their purpose better. To prevent these students from making a heartbreaking struggle against circumstance in order to gain a liberal education which they do not really want is not such a crime as it might appear to be. Already many a state university has yielded to popular pressure and added to its curriculum numerous practical courses whose object is the imparting of various skills. It is possible that these institutions may be brought to embrace this function more whole-heartedly.”
Deep Thoughts on Higher Ed 