U.S. Colleges Get Swanky: Golf Courses, Climbing Walls, Saunas

Boston University Athletic Director Warren Dexter smiles as he surveys the scene in the school's new $100 million, five-level recreational center one morning in May. About 18 students soak in the heated whirlpool, while others jog against the current in the ``lazy river,'' a churning channel of water.

Professors in their 70s swim laps in the 16-lane pool. A line of rock climbers forms near the 35-foot-tall artificial mountain. ``If you could only hear the students and faculty saying, `You did this right,''' says Dexter, a 33-year veteran of BU, which also just completed a 290,000-square-foot (26,940- square-meter) sports and entertainment arena.

The BU gym is among hundreds of luxurious new amenities rising on U.S. college campuses -- and few of these projects are directly related to education.

The University of Houston built a 256,000-square-foot recreation and wellness center with a 62-foot-high atrium and outdoor pool studded with palm trees. Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont, has its own 18-hole golf course and a heated, $17.5 million ice hockey rink that holds 2,600.

Ohio State University in Columbus completed a 600,000-square- foot recreation center with three pools, a 25-person hot tub and two saunas in June. There's a video game arcade next to the ESPN SportsCenter desk at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York, where students can perform and e-mail their own news broadcasts.

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Amenities such as climbing walls and massage rooms are recruitment tools to impress students and their parents, says Jean Rutherford Wall, director of college counseling at Tampa Preparatory School in Tampa, Florida.

``Colleges feel they must market the tangible products that are readily available to the student,'' she says. ``Fancy new dorms with suite configurations, the newest toys, airy student centers with Starbucks and science labs that are cutting edge. If they don't have these things, it puts them at a disadvantage in the marketplace.''
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At a time when colleges are stockpiling money, they should be focused on making an education more affordable rather than constructing lavish swimming pools and video arcades, says Patrick Callan, 62, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, an independent nonprofit group in San Jose, California.

Cost Doubles

College tuition rates have increased about 8 percent a year in current dollars since 1958, meaning the cost of college doubles every nine years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Private schools increased their total charges by 5.6 percent last year to an average of $27,516, says the College Board, a nonprofit education association of more than 4,700 schools. Total charges at public universities rose 7.8 percent to an average of $11,354.

``A lot of what we are seeing is an arms race,'' Callan says. ``This is a Star Wars competition for prestige, in which there will never be enough money to entice the students you want.''

It's not just the Ivy League schools that are jacking up prices. The University of Richmond, a private liberal arts school, raised undergraduate tuition by 31 percent this year, bringing total costs for freshmen to $40,510.

Higher Rankings

Schools are using their wealth to look better rather than lower costs, says Ronald Ehrenberg, director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and author of ``Tuition Rising: Why College Costs So Much'' (Harvard University Press, 2000).

Attracting and then rejecting higher numbers of students while spending more per pupil can give schools what college administrators covet: higher rankings in the U.S. News & World Report ranking surveys, Ehrenberg says. As a result, colleges have no incentive to cut tuition.

``You aren't rewarded for being fiscally efficient, so it's assumed the more that you spend, the better you are as a school,'' Ehrenberg says. ``And that is disturbing. So everyone is spending more than they should because they're worried about their position, and that makes it difficult for schools to cut costs.''

Moody's Investors Service is also critical of the expansive building and borrowing on U.S. campuses.

Country Club Mentality

``We continue to see institutions borrowing heavily for projects that serve more to enhance an institution's status rather than to advance its mission or meet current pressing facility needs,'' a Moody's 2004-2005 report says. ``These projects include mixed-use commercial developments, high-end residential facilities, research parks and lavish student recreation buildings and performing arts centers.''

Colleges are developing a country club mentality that has little to do with acquiring knowledge and learning to think, says Leon Botstein, president of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.

``There should be a more Spartan aspect to education that is more conducive to learning,'' says Botstein, 58, whose college will cost students an estimated $41,800 in the school year beginning this fall. ``You are looking at a culture driven by Hollywood and vulgarity, people who are more interested in hot tubs than in what goes on in the classroom. Are we spending on education or a cruise for entertainment?''

Learning and Literature

Colleges have become less about learning and literature and more about branding and marketing, says David Kirp, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley and author of ``Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line: The Marketing of Higher Education'' (Harvard University Press, 2003). Instead, students are treated like pampered consumers, he says.

``We're in a higher-education tournament, with every school wanting to move up in the pecking order, and a big part of the costs are about wooing students,'' he says. ``Is society getting better-educated students as a result? That's not so clear.''

At its best, higher education should liberate the imaginations and intellectual energies of students, says Richard Hersh, former president of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and co-editor, with John Merrow, of a book titled ``Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk'' (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). He says he worries that there's no way to know whether schools are doing that job.

Soliciting Gifts

``There is no evidence that the money spent on high-end dorms, great athletics and computers in every room makes any difference in what students are actually learning,'' he says.
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Elaborate Gyms

As colleges plan elaborate gyms and student centers, they're also paying closer attention to where students sleep and what they eat. On a May afternoon, representatives from 240 colleges tuned in to an hour-long Web seminar entitled ``Strategies to Gain a Competitive Edge: Improving the Campus Experience,'' a lesson moderated by University Business magazine.

Building housing for students that looks more like apartments and quadrangles is one way, says Robert Sevier, a senior vice president at Stamats Inc., a Cedar Rapids, Iowa-based higher-education research, planning and marketing company. “They're very space-oriented,'' he says. “Many had their own bedroom and bathroom, so their physical space is very, very important to them.''

The `Money Walk'

Sevier describes how to showcase the best facilities along what he calls the ``money walk,'' or the tour potential donors, parents and students take when they visit a college.

The so-called campus dining experience (say goodbye to cafeteria steam tables) is another way schools can stand out, says Peter Cusato, vice president for business affairs at BU. The school boasts 18 ``dining venues'' within one mile, offering cuisine from places like the Caribbean and the Pacific Rim, along with meals prepared on demand.

``You want to keep people on campus and make them feel at home,'' Cusato says.

Colleges that don't spend money for better facilities can't attract top faculty members with prestigious grants and research dollars, says Robert Zemsky, founding director of the Institute for Research on Higher Education, a public policy center at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

``If you don't build them, you can't be in the game,'' says Zemsky, 65, who is also a trustee at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a liberal arts school with 1,860 students.

The school, which has a $1.2 billion endowment, set a record for liberal arts colleges by raising $470 million in a five-year capital campaign that was scheduled to end in June.
The 500-acre, wooded Wellesley campus is being transformed by gifts, Walsh told alumni fund-raisers and donors in New York in April, as they clinked wine glasses in celebration.

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``A generation ago, colleges saw themselves as academic destinations,'' says Wellesley trustee Beth McNay, escorting guests on a hard-hat tour in May. ``Now, we want to make campus life as right as it can be. How can you not be a part of the times in which you exist?''

Graduating Wellesley senior Bailey Childers, 22, says she would rather see money go toward reducing costs. ``I'll have about $40,000 in loans when I graduate,'' Childers says. ``My question is the priorities.''
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`Psychology of Entitlement'
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If alumni keep supporting their alma maters, colleges can keep renovating and building. They'll need to, because students have great expectations, marketing expert Sevier says. ``They come to your campus with a galloping psychology of entitlement,'' he says.

Already, schools hoping to impress students are offering motorized scooters for campus tours and giving out concert tickets, Sevier says. ``We're seeing students get some pretty amazing gifts, like BlackBerries,'' he says.