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It’s not clear to me that $180 million is an unreasonable amount of money to spend on a state-of-the-art building with multiple music studios and dance halls, necessary for music or dance programs that the school (presumably) offers. Between the tuition the students pay, grants from government, and potential commercial use of the space (for concerts, shows, etc.) it’ll likely pay for itself soon enough.

Also bear in mind - while still pricy, higher education in Canada is leagues cheaper than in the US. My degree from UofT - usually internationally ranked among or at least near the Ivy Leagues - was about $5000 a year.

So I’m not sure this belongs in the same category of educational institution excess or Bermuda Triangle of finance stuff you’re talking about.

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>it’ll likely pay for itself soon enough.

Thats the problem though right? "Paying for itself" means students paying higher costs which is the problem.

Only the students who feel the need to attend a university with state of the art facilities.

Unfortunately it's not such an easy decision when businesses value degrees more from universities with state of the art facilities.

Ideally the school offers no facilities so the students don’t need to pay anything /s

That was the upshot of the second paragraph of my post - in Canada, students don’t pay an absurd amount, so it’s not really a problem.

The problem is the worlds 'state of the art'.

You don't need a lot of space for dance halls and music studios for under 2000 students. People add sound insulation to existing rooms at relatively low cost and it's cheaper when your starting from scratch.

So, in terms of education they really could have done the same thing for under 50 million, but why build a utilitarian box when you want to attract students.

I think they meant it's enough space for 1800 students simultaneously, which is actually quite a large number.

This is not a picture of efficient use of space: https://www.macewan.ca/contribute/groups/public/documents/im...

The school only has 20k student population and music students are going to other buildings. So, it's not simultaneously unless you mean as an audience.

I mean sure it looks nice, but that price tag is not due to utility. 60 million still pays for a huge building even at 1/3 the cost.

$180m is still $90k/student. If the building lasts 30-40 years without major maintenance, that’s still $2-3k per student year, which is a healthy chunk of what tuition should be.

A building that has studio space for 1800 should be much cheaper, building costs should be on the order of $500/student/year to keep tuition reasonable.

This. The overwhelming majority of machinists learned the trade on clapped out old Bridgeports. Competition shooters started out on 10/22s that had a bajillion rounds put through them. There's no reason to give a student something nice if the student's ability is not yet limited by their resources. Even with crappy facilities and equipment the student's ability is almost always the bottleneck.

As per the article: >$11.8 million is equal to one-eighth of the total amount the university took in through tuition and fees during the 2016-2017 academic year. So they are spending 2 approx twice of there tuition revenue on one building. I guess this kind of money could have been put to better use.

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