Thu 1 May 2008
Thought that my 1,400 words on the cost of the WNY program was my last word on the topic? Think again!
The Waters Report is a political document, designed to lead its readers to certain conclusions. It does so by means both fair and unfair. One of its principal complaints is the “significant expense” of WNY, yet its description of those expenses and comparisons to Williams-Exeter Program in Oxford (WEPO) is incomplete at best.
But the dog that does not bark in the Report is Williams Mystic. Here we have a program with similar aims, also serving a small, largely self-selected group of students and faculty. Like WNY (and unlike WEPO) it has an explicit focus on experiential learning and an implicit leaning toward certain academic fields. Why does the Report never mention Williams Mystic? Specifically, why are we not told how the per student “subsidy” compares between Mystic and WNY?
A priori, I would have expected such a comparison to make WNY look bad. Surely the cost of running a program in suburban Connecticut is less than the cost of a program in Manhattan. Note that many (?) non-Williams students attend Williams Mystic and are charged $24,500. This is more than the pro-rated cost of a semester at Williams since it does not include Winter Study. Since the College does not (?) charge a Williams student more for attending Williams Mystic, there is at least some subsidy here. But, if Mystic is much cheaper than WNY, then why wouldn’t the authors of the Report point that out? Why wouldn’t they use the comparison as a way to point out that WNY is too expensive?
It is unlikely that they lacked access to the data since committee member Keith Finan works in the Provost’s Office and probably knows where to find information about almost anything that Williams spends money on. Perhaps this was a simple oversight on their part. But the Committee members are smart, careful people. I wager that the comparison occurred to them and that, for some reason, they decided not to present it to the faculty. If I were a member of the pro-WNY forces, I would want to find out why. I would suspect that the Committee did not present the data because, when you look closely, Mystic is fairly expensive, especially when you account accurately for costs of the expeditions. Care to determine a market price for a trip like this?
May 1st, 2008 at 9:37 am
In this cruel political world, the reason may be something like “someone on the Committee doesn’t care for the way Professor Jackall parts his hair”.
May 1st, 2008 at 9:58 am
When I was at Williams-Mystic, I did talk to the organizers about the cost of the trips. FYI, there are three main trips at W-M:
- 10-day trip on a 130-foot two-masted sailing ship
- 10-day trip in the Pacific Northwest
- week-long shorter trip (Louisiana or Chesapeake)
I commented to one of the professors that these must be extremely expensive. For instance, on the first trip on the ship, there were about a dozen crew members that had to be paid, plus the cost of maintaining the ship, in addition to the regular costs of a trip. However — and I forget the number exactly — it turns out that this trip is not that expensive, less than $1500 per student (if I recall correctly).
I am pretty sure that the Pacific Northwest trip would be less expensive, because the main cost is airfare. We stayed in a marine biology dorm in a big hallway, with “rooms” separated by curtains; we traveled in minivans; we ate cereal, sandwiches and pasta.
So, the trips are definitely expensive, but since they have some economy of scale (18 students, 6 professors) and we traveled to relatively inexpensive places, it didn’t end up being as obscenely expensive as Manhattan would be.
May 1st, 2008 at 11:25 am
Additionally, Mystic and Oxford both own their properties (correct me if I’m wrong). Thus, comparing costs isn’t necessarily the best way to look at these things; Williams has already made significant investments in these two programs, which likely would make it less willing to pull out of them. WNY, on the other hand, would be relatively easy to pull out of without any huge costs, and it wouldn’t be the only program canceled like this–Williams in Africa seems to have been permanently suspended as well (although for different reasons).
May 1st, 2008 at 12:41 pm
current eph: Williams would stay in a program because of sunk costs? Are there no economists at Williams? Hint: previous investment makes no difference to the cost/benefit analysis.
May 1st, 2008 at 1:00 pm
I’m sure sunk costs play a factor in the decision, if only psychologically.
However, I wasn’t clear enough about expressing what I meant–that wasn’t my point. I meant that it’s very possible that for W-Mystic, WNY, and WIOX to function, significant one-time expenditures must be made for buildings and infrastructure. For WIOX and Mystic, the board has already made these investments (and yes, they are sunk-costs, so they should not really enter in any decisions about sustaining these programs). However, for WNY, these investments have not yet been made. This is why it’s a different sort of decision…the decision (now) to sustain WIOX or Mystic is only about yearly operating expenses, while the decision (now) to sustain WNY is about a significant up-front expenditure AND yearly operating expenditures.
May 1st, 2008 at 3:24 pm
My opinion, which is always unasked and unwanted, has always been that WNY was a subsidy masquerading as an academic program, not an academic program in search of a subsidy.
But your mileage may vary.
For what it is worth, though, the Williams Club has been hillariously poorly managed over the years.
May 1st, 2008 at 9:30 pm
In my day at Williams in the 50’s there was something called the Meade Fund that sent economics and political science majors to Washingotn to interview pols,journalists, advisors, lobyists or folks in fields we were researching. I took 4 or 5 of them. There were ones for poli ec majors, ones for honors students, one for team research projects. Mr Meade evidently had endless money and wanted Williams to lavish in on sending students to Washington. And the faculty used its clout to line up interviews with important people. No one asked how much it cost. It was Mr. Meade’s $ and he had said to lavish it on folks in social science.
That’s the way it used to be. Some rich alum would decide to spend $ on X and on X it would be spent. Not today. Some Princeton alum trying to save wrestling from being eliminated due to high cost offered to completely endow wrestling. The Princeton administration turned the $ down. Something about the university should set priorities.
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:39 am
Except with the Herb Allen ‘62 Theater that wasn’t on any of the College’s priority lists until Pres. Payne freelanced the deal and got himself fired before he’d even unpacked his stuff in Williamstown.
May 3rd, 2008 at 10:34 pm
President Payne did the right thing. The ‘62 Theater is an outstanding complement to the College and it is in the right location.
Thank Herb Allen and Payne for their tenacity and insight. The intractable gamesmanship is part of the political principle underlying the vital role between competing campaigns found within societies.
Were only institutions about their charge rather than their liege lords.
May 4th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
WIOX does not own its building - it operates it under a long-term lease. This means that there is a running cost for housing there.
In any event, I am biased on these things, as were it not for WIOX I probably would have gone to Princeton.