However, the $10 million MSU is using for the facility could be better spent in support of students — students who want a quality, affordable education. Despite the state support for this particular project, overall state funding for universities has fallen, and universities statewide have attempted to find ways to keep up revenues.

MSU has passed the cost of lower public funding onto its student body by raising tuition, making it even more difficult to obtain a well-priced education here. When students are looking for a place to receive a higher education, the renovations to Old Horticulture Building, Wells Hall, the Brody Complex Neighborhood dining hall and now this new facility certainly are attractive.

However, if those same students aren’t offered substantial financial aid and can’t afford MSU’s increased tuition rates, their love of the campus’ beauty won’t mean anything.

It’s also understandable that MSU officials feel they have to continue constructing and remodeling facilities to improve the university’s presence nationally and internationally. In doing so, however, they appears to care more about how MSU is perceived than about its ability to help students afford a quality education.

Part of MSU’s identity as a university with the top-10 enrollment of international students as of 2010 is tied to that presence.

However, MSU was founded as a public land grant institution, and it appears to have lost sight of that fact in its quest for renown. MSU is too busy looking at the scoreboard to see the toll playing the game is taking on its players.

In these tough times, the $10 million it will cost to build the Bio Engineering Facility should be prioritized for state students rather than invested in framework.

A building, once finished, can attract students and researchers from across the world. Successful alumni who don’t have the burden of loan debt can donate back to the university, feed back into the place that made them who they are today. Both scenarios help MSU, but while buildings eventually need to be modernized or torn down, human capital never needs remodeling.

Students are the lifeblood of MSU. The board can’t discount that when steering this university in the future.