College Budgets for Dummies

As Tuition Rises, RVCC Still Gives the Best Bang for Your Buck

By Matt DeBlass

Tuition is taking another hike next year, up $4 a credit. With new buildings going up and parking still a challenge, students may be wondering where their money is going.

According to RVCC President Casey Crabill, in order to understand how the money gets spent, it’s necessary to understand how the costs are broken up and where funds come from. Operating expenses, she says, such as professors’ salaries, utilities bills and the purchase of supplies, come from a combination of the state, county and student tuition. Capital funds, which are used for new construction and maintenance, come from county and state programs, not tuition.

When the college was founded in 1968, school officials intended the state, the county and the students to each cover approximately one-third of the operating budget. As time went on, however, the state gave less and less money; it currently only provides about 20% of the total budget. The rest comes about equally from county funding and tuition.

The 2008 budget approved by the Board of School Estimate on Feb. 16 is $42 million. Nearly $17 million of the spending plan will be paid for by tuition. That may sound like a lot, but when broken down among more than 7,000 students, the board predicts that individual students will find it manageable.

The school is seeking more than $5 million in major capital funds this year (capital funds come in major and minor: major to build stuff, minor to fix it), about a million of which to build 250 parking spots by the fall semester.

“We were very frank with the county,” said Crabill. She explained to county representatives why the funding was necessary by inviting them to “come try and park here.”

According to John Trojan, vice president of finance and facilities, although the cost of attending RVCC is rising, the college works hard to keep the increase equal or less to that of the general cost of living. “We pull it off by being even more lean (than four-year colleges).”

You have to ask, Trojan said, “What does that money buy?”

He pointed out RVCC’s average class size is smaller than many more expensive schools. Part of the reason, he said, is that RVCC professors teach more and focus on research less than their colleagues elsewhere. While many university professors teach ten credit hours a year, he said, RVCC professors teach 30. “You need
three Rutgers professors to cover one of ours.”

Another thing that Trojan feels helps to keep the operating budget down is the extensive use of adjunct professors. These are part-time teachers, many of whom have full-time careers in the fields they teach. Adjuncts are paid considerably less than full-time staff. Not only does the practice save money, he said, but it also contributes to the value of an RVCC education.

It is a “significant benefit to have a professor who is current in his field,” Trojan said, as opposed to one who may have a purely academic understanding of what he teaches.

Both Crabill and Trojan expect the budget to grow every year no matter what the school does. But they say the college is working hard to keep costs down as much as possible.

“Our goal,” says Crabill, “is to make sure we go up a lot less than the four-year colleges.”