Students were welcomed back this week and found that over the break, the college spent presumably large amounts of money on new amenities and upgrades, such as the fancy new branded soap dispensers around campus and a revised watermark. Rather than focusing on such trivial updates, the college should concertedly invest in services that would improve student life.
On average, the total estimated cost of attending Geneseo for a New York State resident for the 2018-2019 academic year is $24,768, according to Geneseo’s Cost of Attendance webpage. About $6,870 of that total comes from tuition alone.
Nevertheless, it is often difficult for students to directly see the results of these expenses. It’s even more frustrating when they see them in the form of apparently unnecessary updates.
This trend has apparently not been limited to Geneseo, according to Forbes magazine.
“While students are paying more for their education, public colleges and universities are spending less money on them—less bang for more buck,” an article from Forbes reported.
It appears that Geneseo has fallen into this mentality as well.
While additional soap dispensers may be marginally more useful than the previous dispensers, they are unnecessary expenses in the face of packed student parking lots or a lack of on-campus study spaces for late nights. Beyond the soap dispensers, the money spent on reworking and researching the college’s new logo could have easily gone toward addressing larger student life concerns.
Colleges are businesses and their students are the ones that keep them running. With that being said, students should be able to hold the school accountable for how they spend their money, especially when it is not abundantly clear how it is benefiting them.