Determining College Policy

A recent news article stated that the average tuition for a private college over the course of four years amounts to about $225,000. For a public college it's about $108,000 for four years. These figures include the miscellaneous fees that many universities charge all students. That's a lot of money that students and their parents are forking over for tuition. Considering the amount of money that's being paid to many universities, how much of a role should students have in deciding how their college is run and what policies are put into place?

In my experience, I have discovered that there are a couple different kinds of colleges. There are the obvious differences such as public vs. private, urban vs. rural, and big vs. small. However, to my thinking, there is a more important distinction. Colleges that care about students vs. colleges that care about numbers. Every single college claims to care about it's students and very few will admit to caring about numbers. The numbers I'm speaking about are usually rankings in publications like U.S. News and World Report. There are several ways that a focus on numbers can affect a school's policies including course requirements and how money is distributed within the university.

Let's consider coursework. How much of a say should students have in determining their course work? College is supposed to be a time when students explore different areas of interest and figure out what they really want to do. However, most universities want their students to graduate with a directed major and graduate with well-rounded knowledge. This can lead to a serious conflict of interest. Students want to study what they want to study and colleges want them to study in a particular area with a particular curriculum. Many times this curriculum is prescribed by accreditation agencies and if colleges don't stick to that curriculum they can lose their accreditation and thus lose their reputation. However, at what point does a prescribed curriculum become detrimental to a student's education rather than beneficial?

Some other concerns that unversities have include students that create their own curriculum so that they take only very easy courses and graduate with artificially inflated GPAs. I would argue that any student who does this, is hurting only themselves and stiffly prescribed curriculums that are used to combat this only hurt students who wish to learn as much as they can during the four short years they are in college.

What about how money is allocated within the university? Many universities have student run budget committees that allocate money to specific student organizations. But students have no control over whether money goes towards athletics, development, or academics. Of course, many times this does not affect students directly unless the money is obviously mis-managed and parts of the school are suffering because of it. Sadly, there is no way to determine if money is being managed appropriately because students simply do not have access to that kind of information and will not unless something is drastically wrong. Of course,

Of course, colleges are very diverse locations and giving students access to this kind of financial information would result in huge clashes of interest between students who believe their department should receive more money. So perhaps in this circumstance it is best to have objective decision-makers.

In conclusion, it seems to me that students should have the most say in issues that involve their direct specific education and less say in the whole of the university. While educators may believe they know what's best for the general population of a specific major... there is no way for them to asess each students situation individually and so that should be left to the student and perhaps a faculty advisor who understands the university and the student very well.