This comes in from the June 18 New York Times:
Rhodes College in Memphis economizes — and gives students work experience — by hiring students in 25 professional staff positions, saving $725,000 a year. And the College of Wooster in Ohio is trying to hold on to financially struggling students, and their tuition dollars, by offering minimum-wage summer jobs in its “WooCorps,” which has almost 200 students painting rooms, landscaping and growing vegetables this summer. WooCorps students will get an extra $1,000 in their financial aid packages — and help the college complete more maintenance projects than usual.
That's just a sampling of some good thinking on the part of small colleges across the United States as they adjust to financial realities. MUS, a not-for-profit, tuition-based institution, functions along similar lines as these college institutions. We receive no federal or state funding, and as dollars are more limited, we must be more cautious and more thoughtful of our budget.
Sounds like there is limited blood on the tracks with these small college cutbacks from what I read. I've long thought that MUS could enact more student engagement benefiting maintenance as students could reasonably police their own messes more. Four years ago in the Lower School, we began a weekly dining room lunch clean-up crew assigned by homerooms and rotated throughout the year. We built on that by initiating Campus Beautification, maintaining the same lunch responsibilities and adding to each study hall period a before and after walk-around, policing the halls and stalls. While we don't claim any cost savings yet, we at least have the boys in a position to grow alert to their surroundings, initiating some platform where they experience responsibility for their messes. Hopefully, the campus looks cleaner as well.
As the boys invest time and energy into contributing to maintenance, we think the real investment is towards their gradual emotional intelligence as they have some liturgy to break the middle-school narcissism that comes naturally with this age. Too often, they think only of themselves. We're partially to blame as we assign individual homework and record individual marks per student. We expect each boy to keep up with his own stuff, to lan his work and to work his plan It's easy to see why they can act somewhat neurotic and self-absorbed. Campus Beautification aims to break into that temptation and encourage a team ethos during the academic day. The duality is something they must learn to navigate as they mature. If we put some dollar savings into the mix for their understanding, that could be a worthy project.
