Tuition is skyrocketing and financial aid remains insufficient. The Brown administration is very, very good at offering nonsensical but reasonable-sounding explanations for why this might be. Of these explanations, probably the silliest is our so-called $4 million “deficit.”
As Provost Mark Schlissel P’15 put it last week, “We have to work on dropping this deficit down,” saying that the unpredictability of future budgets “underscores a need for cautious planning” with regard to the deficit (“U. deficit could constrain budget planning,” Nov. 8). Never mind that we’re currently in the midst of a $56 million building campaign centered around the ludicrous destruction of the Gate — after two renovations in five years. Never mind that we just built a $50 million gym.
Never mind that the strategic plan includes a lengthy list of new construction projects, most of which are at best luxuries and at worst completely unnecessary, such as “shared convening spaces spread throughout campus.” Never mind the explosion of administrative spending, almost a 50 percent increase over the past decade. Never mind that when faced with a choice between construction and expansion versus financial aid and faculty members and workers, this university’s rulers will choose the former almost every single time.
In the face of the University’s massive spending and its massive ability to fundraise, a $4 million deficit is basically a neat little accounting trick. It’s a deficit that only exists when you discount the massive resources available to the administration to spend as they please. It’s a tool for administrators trying to spin away the fact that making Brown affordable and accessible is very, very low on their priority list, as seen in the almost total neglect of aid in the strategic plan. It has little to no bearing on what Brown can actually afford to do in the years to come.
This is a university that charges more than half its students more than what the average American makes in a year. This is a university that rejects international and Resumed Undergraduate Education students for not being rich enough. This is a university that tries to slash worker benefits time and time again. Try to address these concerns, try to advocate for better salaries and benefits and better aid, try even to build something in a non-favored department and administrators pull out their Serious Voices to talk about the budget. It’s funny how, when it comes to the School of Engineering and massive aquatic centers, those concerns magically disappear.
Last year, the University raised $195.4 million, a five-year high. The School of Engineering is in the midst of a $160 million campaign. For the sake of comparison: President Christina Paxson has estimated that making admissions need blind would cost $12.5 million a year, which $250 million would support for the foreseeable future. It’s absolutely untrue that we can’t afford to go need blind. We just can’t go need blind and fulfill every other administrative whim.
Administrators will often claim to be at the mercy of donors for setting priorities. This is simply untrue. When we built the Nelson Fitness Center, the University set the plan, and then fundraised and fundraised and fundraised to make it happen. There is no reason they couldn’t do this for need-blind admission or for significant tuition reduction and financial aid increases. In fact, former President Ruth Simmons, to a limited extent, did exactly that, in large part because students made her. Administrators generally don’t do this because they don’t want to and because they have other priorities.
And that’s where the real fight is: priorities. The University is run by the financial industry executives, corporate lawyers and chief executive officers who make up a majority of the Corporation. In their worldview, providing a good education and having a diverse, representative student body are mostly unrelated. They want a university that will continue to attract wealthy families with little concern for cost shopping around for posh dorm rooms and dining halls. They want a university with flashy gadgets and buildings full of glass ready to turn out a very specific type of student with a certain earning potential. They don’t particularly care about what a college loses when it’s overwhelmingly suburban or affluent or white. They certainly don’t care about paying workers decently.
Students care. Faculty members care. Staff members care. But as long as Paxson and the Corporation are calling the shots, it’s very, very difficult for any of this to change.
Spreading misinformation about budgets and deficits is an old tactic, used by con men and grifters seeking to shift money to wrongheaded or unpopular priorities. “Deficit hawks” across the country have claimed we have no choice but to shred the social safety net and cut services to the bone. Even as the federal deficit has shrunk, the debt has ceased to be a major problem, and the claims of deficit hawks have been repeatedly debunked. People who would never support tax hikes on the wealthy or an end to corporate welfare have feigned concern for “the deficit” in order to slash popular social programs. The parallels draw themselves.
There are real deficits in the world that are actually problematic. Then there are imaginary deficits, tools in a time-honored choreography designed to muddy the waters and cover up ongoing injustices.
Forty years ago, powerful student and faculty movements forced universities across the world to respond to student and faculty needs. At Brown, the good things we do have are due to a decades-long history of activism. We have what we have thanks to sit-ins in University Hall by people fighting for need-blind admission, for meaningful financial aid, for an end to the exclusion of the non-rich and non-white from our student body and faculty.
University administrators like to feign impotence in the face of mostly imagined budget problems. If you ask them why we reject international students for being too poor, they’ll say we can’t afford not to. Don’t believe them.
Daniel Moraff ’14 can be reached at daniel_moraff@brown.edu.
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