<p>Grad06:</p>
<p>You make good points. One thing we have to consider is that we are only talking about a very small slice of schools that have any meaningful endowment money to spend. Most of the 1000s of colleges and universities do not.</p>
<p>Perhaps four examples of solid schools in Swarthmore’s general area would help illustrate. These numbers are all from the 2003/04 academic year Financial Reports for consistency:</p>
<p>Swarthmore:</p>
<p>Per student charges: $26,585
Per student spending: $68,304
Per student spending from endowment: $29,155</p>
<p>Haverford:</p>
<p>Per student charges: $28,877
Per student spending: $54,233
Per student spending from endowment: $14,423</p>
<p>Franklin & Marshall:</p>
<p>Per student charges: $34,566
Per student spending: $41,461
Per student spending from endowment: $7,790</p>
<p>Muhlenburg:</p>
<p>Per student charges: $26,151
Per student spending: $27,355
Per student spending from endowment: $1,492</p>
<p>I’ll leave it up to each person to decide if, overall, Swarthmore is “better” than Haverford. If Haverford is “better” than Franklin & Marshall. If F & M is “better” than Muhlenberg. That’s certainly the order that general concensus would rank them.</p>
<p>Note that the “per student charges” are important to consider. They represent the ability of a college to enroll diversity because this figure is net of financial aid discounts. A college that needs to maximize revenues to balance the budget will offer less financial aid discounts. Thus, if a college has a reputation as a “rich kids preppy” school (like F&M), that reputation may well result directly from budgetary necessity, i.e. the college simply has to focus on enrolling full-pay students. Thus, the seeming anomoly of F&M charging the average student considerable more than Swarthmore, despite much lower per student expenditures. If you could get in both places, would you pay as much to attend Muhlenberg as you would to attend Swarthmore?</p>
<p>These are all issues that derive directly from “per student endowment”.</p>