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Real student politics

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After months of wrangling, the value of a UW education will finally be decided this week.

In January, Gov. McCallum told the UW System to cut $51 million from its budget and cap in-state tuition at 10 percent. The Assembly decided to completely forsake UW’s future by increasing the budget cuts to $108 million; the Senate gave all but $20 million back, and now the two will negotiate a compromise; we reckon the System will end up with a cut of about $51 million.

What remains to be seen is how big next year’s tuition increases will be — the Legislature is leaning toward a measly 8 percent tuition increase cap. As we have said all semester, the legislature should let the Board of Regents do its job instead of using tuition caps for political gain. UW-Madison in-state tuition is currently second-lowest in the Big Ten; it is worthwhile to raise it if quality is at stake.

But the most worrisome aspect of these budget negotiations is the fate of out-of-state students. These students are already paying the second-highest tuition in the Big Ten and are facing a double-digit increase under the current budget. Already the results are being felt — only 30 percent of accepted out-of-state students choose to attend UW-Madison, and increasing their tuition again will make it virtually impossible to attract medium-income out-of-state students.

The Assembly is trying to saddle out-of-state students with the state’s budget shortfalls, imposing an additional 10 percent surcharge. Fortunately, the Senate declined to completely destroy UW-Madison diversity and national-university status and did not pass the surcharge; still, they too capped only in-state tuition. Every UW-Madison student would benefit if out-of-state tuition were left untouched. It’s past time out-of-state students stop subsidizing the rest of us.