2008 Woodie Awards
A Closer Look: The unsurprising truth about your tuition
By: Alex Park, News Editor
Issue date: 11/2/07 Section: News
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On Oct. 17, proponents of a motion to cancel class in protest of the Iraq War failed to attract a sufficient number of faculty to hold a vote. The motion was dropped, and President Brian Rosenberg made it clear this week that, had it passed, he would not have supported it anyway.
But with that in mind, let us just assume that this will not be the last time someone will want to cancel classes in the name of a cause. It certainly was not the first time. For most of us, that came late last year when talk of a day of "Change and Exchange" was circulating rapidly across campus.
That time, as with this one, people who were strongly against cancellation came out with a similar argument, and a similar line of reasoning: if the school is going to cancel class for the day, that means they are going to waste your money.
If only it were so simple.
If you were against cancellation, you might have found yourself advancing the following statistic along with many of your peers: at Macalester, one hour of class time costs $300 of your or your parents' money. For an entire day, that's up to $1,200, depending on what your schedule looks like and on whether the entire day gets the ax (Change and Exchange last year led to only two class periods being canceled). So to provide you some answers to the obvious questions that might ensue, here is food for thought on how that "statistic" is actually formulated.
Let's start with the academic calendar. Classes began this semester on Wednesday, Sept. 5, and will continue until Friday, Dec. 14, the week before finals start. The time in between is 14.5 weeks, or 69 class days, when accounting for fall and Thanksgiving break. Assuming you're taking a full load (12 class hours per week), that means you're paying for some 167 hours of class in the Fall Semester. But really, I should rephrase before I go any further: assuming you're taking a full load, you show up to all your classes, none of them get canceled for any reason, protest or not, and you pay full tuition, you're paying for some 167 hours of class in the fall.
But with that in mind, let us just assume that this will not be the last time someone will want to cancel classes in the name of a cause. It certainly was not the first time. For most of us, that came late last year when talk of a day of "Change and Exchange" was circulating rapidly across campus.
That time, as with this one, people who were strongly against cancellation came out with a similar argument, and a similar line of reasoning: if the school is going to cancel class for the day, that means they are going to waste your money.
If only it were so simple.
If you were against cancellation, you might have found yourself advancing the following statistic along with many of your peers: at Macalester, one hour of class time costs $300 of your or your parents' money. For an entire day, that's up to $1,200, depending on what your schedule looks like and on whether the entire day gets the ax (Change and Exchange last year led to only two class periods being canceled). So to provide you some answers to the obvious questions that might ensue, here is food for thought on how that "statistic" is actually formulated.
Let's start with the academic calendar. Classes began this semester on Wednesday, Sept. 5, and will continue until Friday, Dec. 14, the week before finals start. The time in between is 14.5 weeks, or 69 class days, when accounting for fall and Thanksgiving break. Assuming you're taking a full load (12 class hours per week), that means you're paying for some 167 hours of class in the Fall Semester. But really, I should rephrase before I go any further: assuming you're taking a full load, you show up to all your classes, none of them get canceled for any reason, protest or not, and you pay full tuition, you're paying for some 167 hours of class in the fall.
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