<p>Here’s a fairly accessible article from the Wesleyan student newspaper which covers roughly the same period of time:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.wesleyan.edu/argus/archives/2004.11.09/dateyear/n2.html[/url]”>http://www.wesleyan.edu/argus/archives/2004.11.09/dateyear/n2.html</a></p>
<p>It shows that after you subtract financial aid ($25m at Wesleyan vs. $16m at Swat) the budgets of the two schools are remarkably similar even though Wesleyan is about twice the size of Swarthmore. The biggest difference is that more of Wesleyan’s budget (56%) goes directly to support the academic enterprise than Swat’s (50%.)</p>
<p>What the article does not discuss is that Wesleyan also manages to operate its science laboratories 24 hours a day 365 days a week (Swarthmore faculty can only do research when classes are suspended), qualifying its science faculty for about $10m a year in state and NSF supported research, which in turn allows its undergraduates to produce the highest number <em>and</em> proportion of student co-authored scientific journal articles in the country; to publish a university press; and, to host a year-long, residential center for visitng scholars in the humanities. All on what Swarthmore spends for just half the number of undergraduates. </p>
<p>The article goes on to discuss long-term concerns regarding the size of the endowment, which will be the focus of future fund-raising.</p>