There’s been some amusing hubbub in the education world this summer regarding financial aid and fiscal priorities. Popular educational writer Malcolm Gladwell proposed an odd correlation on his podcast, Revisionist History: The greater a college’s investment in quality food, the lower its commitment to socioeconomically diverse student populations in the form of financial aid. This debate in higher education can be reframed for K-12 private-independent schools, in that your school’s investment in various programmatic aspects should reflect its mission, not the latest fads.
The Debate
As his sole datapoint—constrained perhaps by the podcast’s limited time slot and listener attention spans—Gladwell compared two “elite” liberal arts colleges: Bowdoin College and Vassar College. Both colleges are considered to be of the same caliber, with excellent faculty, facilities, and similar educational missions.
However, Bowdoin is repeatedly lauded for its excellent on-campus food selection, while Vassar’s is generally considered as simply edible—nothing to write home about. Of the two, Vassar enrolls vastly more economically challenged students, with 22% eligible for federal Pell grants. Only 14% of Bowdoin students are Pell grant-eligible.
Therefore, Gladwell posits, Bowdoin’s priorities are skewed, its emphasis on high-caliber cuisine representing a “moral problem” within the school. He even closes his podcast by warning listeners against attending Bowdoin College “or any other school that serves amazing food in its dining hall” because, he says, the school prioritizes vanity resources over funding lower-income educations.
Representatives of Bowdoin College have issued an official rebuttal to the episode. Among claims that the producers of the podcast obtained their information to support a deliberately biased viewpoint under false pretenses, administrators also say that the cafeterias on campus are fully self-supporting, with no extraneous funds diverted from other budgetary priorities—including financial aid initiatives.
Your School’s Resource Priorities
While this debate will blow over before too long, it opens the door to a more genuine discussion of school fiscal priorities.
Consider what’s most important for your school: Higher teacher salaries or cafeterias serving food worthy of a five-star restaurant? More money allocated for professional development or upgraded security cameras? Should your scholarships be more generous to better assist lower income applicants or would that money be better spent on hiring a new language teacher?
How money is spent in a school depends on how the school is structured to best deliver its mission. ISM believes that there are three primary types of schools:
- Those whose mission prioritizes accessibility to the greatest number of students by keeping tuition as low as fiscally possible;
- Those that attract families based on their “academic products,” or graduate outcomes; and
- Those whose missions advocate a curriculum based on individuality and student preference, offering a wide variety of activities and academic subjects.
Proper resource allocation at your school starts with understanding in which of these three categories your school falls. While schools occasionally fall into gray areas, blending different approaches, their overall perspectives are guided by one of the three when considering economic viability. Otherwise, they may drive themselves into financial ruin by extending and straining their resources in inappropriate areas.
In the end, every school resource must be allocated in a way that aligns with its primary mission and continued existence. Spending money in one area means that less is available for other areas, and you must be willing and ready to justify expenditures in context of the school mission and student experience.
Additional ISM resources:
The Source for School Heads Vol. 11 No. 1 A Conversation About Financial Aid: The Second Biggest Budget Item
Additional ISM resources for Gold Consortium members:
I&P Vol. 40 No. 10 Price, Product, Process: A Conceptual Update
I&P Vol. 37 No. 8 Strategic Financial Planning and Your School's Budget Companion Documents
