Club College

Why So Many Universities Look Like Resorts

Andrew S Rosen

• Publisher: Kaplan Test Prep
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781607148845
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Formazione aziendale
• Index: Business

Club College is a chapter excerpt from Change.edu coming out October 18, 2011. On college campuses nationwide, luxury and learning go hand-in-hand, keeping the price tag for higher education out of reach for many Americans. Education innovator, and chairman and CEO of Kaplan, Inc., Andrew S. Rosen examines today's resort-style campus, providing inspiring solutions for stopping the spending spirals and making college affordable for all.
Despite the financial crunch, many American universities have become surprisingly lavish over the past decade, providing state-of-the-art recreation facilities, bistro-style dining, spectacular residence halls that rival fine hotels, and "free" amenities such as Kindles, not to mention multi-million-dollar stadiums and coaches' salaries starting in the high six figures. Showcasing these extraordinary campuses, "Club College" captures the new economic models of higher education, which often divert funds from academics to gain a competitive edge in attracting an elite group of students. On this fascinating tour, Andrew S. Rosen proposes bold new alternatives that focus our nation's dollars on learning.Poised to spark a dialogue about our nation's higher education system, "Club College" makes the classroom the centerpiece of college once again, opening doors to careers for a broad range of talented individuals—arguably our greatest economic asset.

Club College

Why So Many Universities Look Like Resorts

Once upon a time there was a college where the students liked to relax by climbing rocks. Wouldn’t it be great, the college thought, if students didn’t have to trek into the wilderness to climb, but could do it right here on campus? So the college hired a construction team to create a giant wall studded with plastic bumps that, if you were particularly imaginative, resembled rock outcroppings. When the college opened its climbing wall, students loved it, and life was good.

Except life was suddenly not so good at a nearby college where students had nothing to climb. This college considered itself just as good as, if not better than, the first college, but its lack of a climbing wall created a deficiency. Over time, the second college began to feel inadequate. So administrators there decided that it, too, needed a climbing wall. And since the students who attended this college deserved something just as good as, if not better than, the students who attended the first college, the second college decided to make its wall a little bit bigger and a little bit better than the first school’s wall. Indeed, when the wall was complete, it stood a few feet higher than the climbing wall at the first school. Now the students at this school could don harnesses and climb up and rappel down the structure—and life was good.

But it wasn’t good if you attended a third nearby college, whose students looked at the first two colleges and suddenly felt deprived. When they’d decided to attend this fine institution, they’d expected it to keep pace with its rivals. Its administrators fretted: Shouldn’t our students become just as proficient at an important life skill such as rock climbing as students at rival schools? So this third college began building a climbing wall—and in a development that will surprise no one, it made sure its wall was just a little bit taller and a little bit better than its rivals’ climbing walls.

This parable of petty rivalry may sound like a group of eleven-year-old girls when the first in their crowd gets a cell phone. But there’s nothing fictitious about it. Among higher education officials, this incident is known as the Texas College Climbing Wall War.

The conflict began about a decade ago, when Baylor University decided to build a climbing wall. “Plans called for the wall to extend 41 feet,” the Dallas Morning News reported. “Then officials learned that Texas A&M University’s wall is 44 feet. Baylor adjusted its blueprints for a 52-foot wall. Then the University of Houston built a 53-foot wall.”¹

Baylor’s wall remains a focal point on campus tours. Kelli Mc-Mahan, Baylor’s assistant director for campus recreation, says that at the time of its construction, Baylor’s wall was “the tallest freestanding rock wall in Texas,” and while other colleges climbing walls have surpassed it in height, she believes it’s still the nicest. “Some would say it’s more stunning—it’s in the middle of the building, free-standing, versus attached to a wall,” she says.

Today, Texas State University–San Marcos claims to have the highest collegiate climbing wall in the state. It’s an L-shaped structure with arches that can accommodate ten climbers at a time; it opened in 2008. “We’re taller than the others,” says Glenn Hanley, director of campus recreation at Texas State at San Marcos. “There’s some debate over whether we’re taller than [the wall at] University of Texas at San Antonio, but we’re taller. We have more surfaces to climb on. We have more variation in our surface. We have a larger bouldering section.”

Not true, says Eliot Howard, assistant director for outdoor pursuits at the University of Texas at San Antonio. “As I understand it, our wall is a couple of feet taller than theirs,” Howard says. He believes San Marcos’s wall may have more “vertical square footage” than the San Antonio structure. But when it comes to height, which should be the true measure of what matters, he believes San Antonio comes out on top.

This mine-is-bigger-than-yours debate may seem a little ridiculous, but the people in charge of these structures see them as legitimate tools that help them in their pursuit of a worthy goal: recruiting students. “I think it’s attention-getting for students to hear we have the tallest collegiate climbing wall in Texas,” Howard says. “I think that in the scheme of things, adding amenities to our campuses to attract and retain students and to build that sense of pride in our campus makes sense. Climbing walls are one piece of that.”

THERE ARE 168 hours in a week, and at the average college, an undergraduate student takes 15 credit hours per semester—meaning he or she will be in class for 15 hours a week. (Well, almost: on a college campus, a classroom “hour” is 50 minutes.) This means that 93 percent of his or her time will be spent outside the classroom. Some of those hours will be consumed by studying. Some students may spend time doing research, attending special lectures or performances, or participating in an internship. Many will have part-time jobs, join clubs, or engage in a community service project. But no matter how you account for the remaining time, it still leaves plenty of time for fun.

You don’t have to rely on hypothetical math to conclude that today’s college students are having plenty of extracurricular enjoyment—there’s actual data that prove the point. In 2008 a group called Postsecondary Education Opportunity published a report examining how college students utilize their time, based on the results of the American Time Use Survey, which is administered by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For full-time college students aged 18 to 24, it found the average student spends 2.9 hours a day on education (defined as attending classes, doing research or homework, or participating in non-sports extracurricular activities such as student government). In contrast, the students spend 4.5 hours per day on “Leisure and Sports.”² (The education numbers might even be overstated: a 2011 book crunches survey data to indicate that students at four-year traditional colleges spend barely more than twelve hours per week studying.³)

There’s nothing wrong with having fun at college. But if you spend time on campuses today, you can’t help but marvel at how much energy and money colleges are spending to help support students’ desire to have a good time. Many traditional universities today are morphing into full-blown resorts. They have gyms that are better appointed than most commercial health clubs. They’ve replaced traditional dining halls with more intimate bistro-style eateries, restaurant-quality facilities, and food courts like those found in a shopping mall. Traveling around campuses, I’m convinced today’s college student has better dining options than most business travelers encounter on the road. These schools’ theaters and museums rival the cultural offerings in many smaller cities. Modern residence halls—no one calls them “dorms” anymore—offer the comfort and luxury you’d find at a mid-range hotel. In fact, many parents who are too frugal to splurge on a quality weekend getaway for themselves are nonetheless incurring enormous expenses to send their children to these luxurious campuses for four years.

It would be one thing if students and their families could opt out of the non-educational offerings that drive up the costs of attendance. But in most cases, they can’t. Like cable companies, higher education institutions typically offer a “bundled product,” an all-inclusive package that requires you to pay for a set of amenities whether you like it or not. In the same way that cable customers who never watch a moment of MTV or ...