The Morality of Tuition

Boston College ranks 7th nationally in “most expensive university,” charging students (as we all know quite well) a base tuition of approximately $63,000 a year, not including room and board. Last year, according to the college itself, the board of trustees approved a “3.86 percent increase in tuition, fees, room, and board, bringing the overall annual cost of attendance at Boston College to $80,296.” 

Yet Boston College justifies this by claiming its financial aid is “need-based,” “blind,” or whatever buzzwords and catchphrases the board of directors and the school’s public relations horde use to make themselves sleep at night. Such ludicrous tuition is almost normalized now; people expect to take massive student loans to cover exorbitant expenses.

Catholics (and indeed anyone who calls themselves “moral”) should be taking a hard look at this system and asking the question, “Is it right?” It would seem that a Catholic school, many of whose teachers are men of the cloth, should exhibit Catholic values. Upon reflecting on the teachings of Christ and the Church and squaring the cost of education with those values, it becomes all too apparent that Boston College has not only abandoned its Catholic mission but is also falling into greed, usury, and general moral malignancy. 

How can this claim be made? There are two things to consider: firstly, does a Catholic institution have an obligation to keep costs as low as is reasonable and possible so as to maintain a decent quality of life and a high standard of education among the students? Second, is the school attempting to keep the costs at a reasonable minimum for its students? 

The principal mission of a Catholic school is, as Pope Paul VI wrote in an encyclical entitled Gravissimum Educationis, “To fulfill the mandate [the Church] has received from her divine founder of proclaiming the mystery of salvation to all men…the Church must be concerned with the whole of man’s life, even the secular part of it insofar as it has a bearing on his heavenly calling therefore [the Church] has a role in the progress and development of education.” 

The role of a Catholic institution of education, whether it be primary school or university, is a holy undertaking. However, expecting students to shell out $80,296 in order to receive such an education should raise some eyebrows. The administration may argue Boston College is a large institution, and indeed is trying to keep costs as low as possible for students. Is this true?

One example that is all too well known to the student body is our failed sports teams. Boston College spends approximately $26 million on its football team every year. Yet BC students are well aware of the failures of our football team. We pay coaches $3+ million (Coach Hafley in particular) to keep our team at a substandard or, depending on the week, abysmal level. 

To many in the student body, it seems like the school prioritizes sports over education, which has only resulted in BC’s constant and unending humiliation. The football team is a poorly-coached laughing stock, and let’s not get started on the swim and dive team, which not only brought national scandal upon our institution of higher learning but as the coup de grâce, finished last out of 12 teams in the 2023 Atlantic Coast Conference championships. 

While the sports teams are an obvious example of wasteful spending, the high tuition becomes even more suspect when one looks at the tax returns. From 2020-2021, the school received a $1,122,749,000 increase in its investment assets, increasing such assets by about one-third and boosting the overall endowment from $5.2 to $6.3 billion. The year after this utterly unprecedented increase in funds, the school hiked expenses across the board. 

To any outsider, this is a money grab. If a Catholic university mission is called from the On High, then the school should be doing everything in its power to reduce costs for students, especially after such an enormous windfall. Instead, the school hiked the costs of attendance and now shovels even more money into scandalous swimmers and incompetent coaches. Meanwhile, students are forced to take on record debt, with which they will be burdened for many years. This is simply not ethical. Whoever is actually in charge of this bureaucratic monstrosity should take a look around and do what is right: make Catholic education accessible for all.