The College Board, that self-proclaimed and widely regarded juggernaut of college preparation, released a survey last Monday. They grabbed anything and everything known about college expenses and stuffed the data into their annual one-two sucker punch of reports: “Trends in College Pricing 2007” and “Trends in Student Aid 2007.”
Hewn from the double-headed beast of the two reports were several chunks of information that the Wisconsin State Journal and The Badger Herald reported earlier this week. Tuition for four-year public colleges nationwide jumped 6.6 percent, surpassing the rate of inflation. The UW System followed the same trend with its tuition rising 6.1 percent.
UW-Madison’s tuition jolted up even further: 6.8 percent, according to the Office of the Registrar’s website. Tuition prices have been growing at roughly the same rate for the past decade, and not counting inflation, the cost of college is 32 percent higher than in 2002-03.
Financial aid, in the form of grants, has failed to compensate for the growth in tuition.
According to The College Board’s report, the increase in grant aid covered only half the increase in tuition at four-year public colleges over the past decade. UW-Madison Office of Student Financial Aid Director Susan Fischer confirmed in an interview with The Badger Herald last Tuesday that the growth of state financial aid, specifically the Wisconsin Higher Education Grants, lags huffing and puffing behind the growth of tuition. With the sluggish rate of grant aid, students have to take more and more loans out of federal and private programs. The other half of tuition increase over the past decade — the half that wasn’t covered by grants — was covered by loans.
Obviously, we must keep the university affordable. Every person, rich or poor, should be able to pursue the elusive American dream of a comfortable middle-class lifestyle in safe and pleasant suburbia, with June Cleaver in the kitchen, Ward sitting by the fireside and the incorrigible Beaver performing his wacky hijinks.
Nowadays, an undergraduate education is often the bare minimum needed to achieve that middle-class lifestyle. If persons further down the economic scale can’t afford college, or are scared off by the high price of tuition, they have a much poorer chance of ascending the economic ladder if they so choose.
Also, debt sucks. With more loans needed to compensate for higher tuition, students will have to hack away at debt further into their employment careers. Not only does this delay or even restrict future purchases like a house, a retirement fund or a college education for one’s own kids, it also pressures debt-ridden graduates to seek jobs that pay well, instead of jobs they may find more fulfilling.
Tuition is rising; expensive is bad. That said, why does tuition continue to rise at such a high rate, while financial aid lags behind? The easiest answer involves the state budget. According to the College Board report, the state government currently contributes the most funding to public four-year universities like UW-Madison. When the state cuts funding from the UW System, the universities have to compensate by increasing the second largest source of their income: tuition. Financial aid is inevitably one of the costs on the cutting block, ensuring the university doesn’t have to jack up its admission price too high.
The Wisconsin Legislature has not met the UW’s requests for funding this past decade. For the 1989-90 school year, the state contributed 34 percent of the university’s budget, an amount Chancellor Wiley considered acceptable, according to his letter to the Legislature two weeks ago. That amount has dwindled down to 20 percent in the current budget. In response, UW has cut a variety of programs and continues to raise tuition.
Tuition rates are not yet in a position to seriously and irreparably disadvantage college students, but at the current trend, they soon will be. Faced with an unreliable state government, at what point does the university stop raising its prices and halt its development? At what point can it justify cutting growth in a particular department for the sake of allowing more students into the entire college?
These are questions that must be answered on an individual basis, either by making your voice heard at the Board of Regents general meetings or by voting Rep. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, out of office. Either way, the situation, like any that involve a giant lumbering bureaucracy that’s all thumbs, is very complex and should be resolved before someone gets hurt.
Jack Garigliano ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in English.
