WASHINGTON -- Colleges and universities that are raising tuition costs even as they enjoy double-digit growth in their investment portfolios are drawing bipartisan scrutiny from Congress.
In the wake of a report showing that 74 U.S. schools have endowments of $1 billion or more, the Senate Finance Committee is asking the nation's wealthiest institutions of higher education, including the Johns Hopkins University and the University System of Maryland, for details on the fees they charge and the financial assistance they offer.
"It's fair to ask whether a kid should have to wash dishes in the dining hall to pay his tuition when his college has a billion dollars in the bank," said Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Senate panel. "We're giving well-funded colleges a chance to describe what they're doing to help students."
Education officials, meanwhile, see the query as an opportunity to clear up misconceptions about college costs.
"The connection they're making is the growth of the endowments, the spending rates and the rising tuition costs," said William E. Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland. "Endowment income is such a small fraction of the operating budget at most public institutions that growth would have little effect on holding down costs."
With an endowment of more than $810 million in 2007, the University System of Maryland ranked 90th nationwide in the report released last week by the National Association of College and University Business Officers. The Johns Hopkins University, with an endowment of $2.8 billion, came in 25th.
University assets nationwide grew by 24.1 percent last year. But administrators say their endowments aren't simply bank accounts to fund whatever they would like. Much of the money has been directed by donors toward specific uses, and it must be managed carefully to protect against reversals.
"It's the pot of money that we rely upon to run the university not only this year but next year and the year after and 100 years from now," said Hopkins spokesman Dennis O'Shea. "We need to be able to rely on it to support the operations of the university after accounting for inflation, and we need to be able to rely on it after good investment years and after bad investment years."
Advocates for more affordable education are looking forward to the debate to come.
