Breaking Down the Spending at One of America's Priciest Public Colleges (Auburn) - WSJ [View all]

AUBURN, Ala.—In recent decades, Auburn University added hundreds of millions of dollars in spending to its budget. The additional money didn’t go to the English department, nor to the sociology department. Some science departments only got a trickle more. Instead, much of the money went toward administrative salaries, buildings and, no surprise, sports. Auburn piled millions more each year into paying down the debt it borrowed for campus upgrades, including an $84 million basketball arena. It hired hundreds of administrators and professional staff. Spending on the president’s office and other administrative departments often increased far faster than that on many academic subjects.

To help pay for its transformation, the school has raised tuition and fees again and again. By one measure, students’ costs have grown faster than at almost any other major public U.S. university. Auburn’s net price, the average amount in-state freshmen pay after grants and scholarships—covering tuition, fees, room, board and other costs—topped $25,000 annually in 2021-22, according to Education Department data. That’s a 60% increase from 15 years prior, adjusted to today’s dollars.

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Opened 164 years ago, Auburn was once geared toward the state’s working class, as was typical of public institutions funded by the sale of donated federal lands, called land-grant universities. More recently, the school, nestled in the hills of east-central Alabama, had loftier ambitions. In 1997, its board set forth a mission statement: Auburn would become one of the nation’s pre-eminent land-grant universities in the 21st century. The school set out to erect state-of-the-art facilities, bring in top professors, develop research programs and add resources to support students. It now has nearly 27,000 undergraduates. All that added to the school’s bottom line.

Auburn’s budget in 2016 totaled $1.2 billion in today’s dollars, a jump of 82% from 2002. Though enrollment grew during that time, it did so at a slower pace, rising by about 20% during the same period. One of the biggest reasons for the growing costs at Auburn, as at many such schools, was the school’s expanding footprint. Among Auburn’s projects built between 2002 and 2016: A $20 million building that is home to information technology staff. A $20 million kinesiology building with labs focused on physical activity and human movement. A $16 million indoor sports facility project that allows student athletes to practice during bad weather.

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