Quote:
Originally Posted by Munchkin03
That article is kind of misleading. Between Brown, RISD, Providence College, and Johnson and Wales, there are 25,000 students. There aren't 25,000 students at Brown, by golly.
This doesn't bother me at all. I think the schools should be paying the city some sort of premium. I don't know how much J&W is, but the cost of attendance at the other three schools is well over $40K; just about half of all students receive financial assistance. That means you have just about 15,000 students paying full freight; another 10,000 probably pay pretty close to that. An extra $300 a year when students use the water, free city buses, parks, police department (there were some things the PPD could do that the individual college police couldn't), and the roads is merely a drop in the bucket. Plus, since the colleges are tax-exempt anyway (and in the case of Brown and RISD, own land in the most expensive parts of Providence).
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First of all, I'm guessing the schools pay for students' on-campus water use. Are the other services you mentioned paid for out of property taxes? Otherwise I don't see why college students - especially those who live off campus and likely already pay for those services through rent - should be singled out.
These college kids also are responsible for helping pay the wages (many high wages) of professors and staff employed by the universities, in addition to the money I'm sure they bring in to countless businesses in the area.