“No taxation without representation!” It is the battle cry that led to the creation of the United States of America. Shouldn’t the same truism apply to all college students in the United States (not just those at Clemson)? If the taxes and fees we pay to attend college form a significant part of the college’s operating expenditure, shouldn’t students have representation on the body making decisions about that expenditure? In Clemson’s case this is the Board of Trustees.
According to the 2018 Statement of Accounts posted on Clemson’s iRoar portal, in 2018, income from Clemson student fees amounted to an annual figure of some $400 million. Students obviously know that there are tuition fees and then a whole bunch of other fees (labs, dining, health, etc.) on top of tuition. It is not clear if the figure of $400 million is just tuition fees or all of them. What is clear, however, is that the total operating expenditure of Clemson in 2018 was some $800 million.
One does not need to have an extraordinarily high math placement test score to work out that our fees make up some 50% of the university’s spending. In business, and Clemson is as much a business as an institution of higher learning, it is normal procedure for those providing the funds to have a say in how those funds are spent. It’s called capitalism.
A quick check of the page on Clemson’s Board of Trustees elicits the staggering information that there is not one student representative. This brings us back to the opening paragraph.
There is much discussion at the moment about whether or not college education should be free of tuition fees. It could be argued that college education should not be treated as a right, but rather as a privilege. And as a privilege that should not be paid for by the many people who have no desire to go to college, but instead by folks contributing from the earnings that arguably flow from their college education.
However, whether one agrees that there should be college fees or not, wherever they come from – the government, parents or seventeen part-time student jobs – should it not be the case that, if fees are paid, then those paying the fees should be properly represented on the body making decisions about how these fees are spent?
Why is representation necessary? Well, here are a couple of points in case. There are courses which charge fees for labs where no lab exists. Would this happen with student representation on the Board of Trustees? The Clemson administration hangs onto monies it receives from the government (financial aid) for about a week before disbursing it. This amounts to interest of approximately $1 million a year. Who gets that interest? Why? Would it happen with student representation on the Board of Trustees? Complaints about parking and healthcare provision on campus are myriad. Why are students not able to be a part of the decisions being made in these regards?
Another important question is what is the Clemson University Student Government doing about gaining student representation on the Board of Trustees? They could be doing loads, but if so, why has there been no success? Maybe they would like to produce an answer for The Tiger newspaper? Maybe, when student government elections come around again in the Spring semester, students should be asking all candidates precisely what steps they will be taking to put student representation on the Board of Trustees?
If the notion of taxation being represented is good enough for the creation of our country, surely it is a good principle for the governance of the institution which will be controlling our lives for the next few years.
