Chancellor Biddy Martin’s new Madison Initiative for Undergraduates, unveiled last Tuesday to students, is designed to improve student services, access to core classes and increase the amount of need-based aid offered to University of Wisconsin students. Martin rightly assesses higher education funding by dividing it into four areas: federal, state and private dollars in addition to tuition money. As state support continues to slip, she is correct in turning to the two sources of money that are out of the hands of politicians and bureaucrats and rather largely in our control — tuition and private donations — in order to fund the initiative.

From the perspective of an in-state student, there really isn’t too much to complain about. Sure, no one ever likes paying more money for something, but assuming the Madison Initiative delivers as promised, it will be a small price to pay. The primary reason why there should be no complaints from Wisconsin natives is that with state support continuing to slip, we need to get money from somewhere in order to maintain our status as an elite research institution. Sure, increasing private donations will help, but it’s not like our peer institutions haven’t thought of the same thing. We need to be continually bringing in more private money just to keep pace.

Inevitably, there will be some students who might decide increasing quality isn’t worth the cost. However, in-state students always have the option to attend another UW System school. If UW-Madison falls back to the pack in terms of quality, that isn’t good for anyone. Wisconsin already has a number of schools that offer a not quite as good education for not quite as much money. Keeping an elite, public university as an option for Wisconsin residents is imperative. If you don’t think it’s worth the price of tuition, there is always the option of choosing a different UW school.

The tuition increase is unlikely to radically affect the future decision-making of top in-state high school students. The number of comparable schools charging a similar tuition for Wisconsin students can be counted without any hands because, well, there aren’t any. Wisconsin students who want a world-class degree at a reasonable price don’t have any other remotely comparable options.

The initiative, however, presents a much different situation for students from beyond Wisconsin’s borders, especially when considering the implications for the decision-making process of the best potential future students. For those of us not lucky enough to be from Wisconsin, the same thing can’t be said about our college choices. If you’re paying out-of-state tuition here, you can just as easily pay out-of-state tuition at any other Big Ten school or another one of our peer institutions.

Biddy and Co. are banking on the fact after the above-average tuition increases, our out-of-state tuition will still be on the lower end of the spectrum in comparison to our higher education competitors to continue to lure top students from across the country to Madison. While these projections are likely accurate, there is an unjustified oversight in projecting we will remain competitive to top national undergraduate talent: merit-based scholarships.

There are plenty of students who don’t qualify for much financial aid, but for whom money is still a consideration. The $3,000 increase might not seem like enough to significantly affect the decision-making of out-of-state students, but it can certainly be enough to tip the scales in favor of staying in their home state for a slightly less prestigious degree or choosing one of our peer institutions. A significant number of our peer institutions are able to tempt top non-residents with merit-based scholarships that close the tuition difference.

Frankly, the UW’s merit-based scholarship opportunities for prospective non-Wisconsinites are scarce and those that do exist don’t manage to offset a very significant amount of the cost of attendance. A quick browsing of the University of Michigan‘s website reveals a couple of scholarships that out-of-state students our eligible for at values of $5,000 and $20,000 per year for four years. UW-Madison? Nothing even remotely similar. Currently, the lack of extensive scholarships for the best-performing students from other states is offset by our low tuition, which functioned as a scholarship for everyone.

Failure to continue to attract top non-Wisconsin students hurts us in several ways. Top professors want to teach top students, better students do better research, better classmates challenge students who do end up going here and, while they’re crude measures of true quality, declining incoming student profiles hurt our rankings. Being surrounded by better peers improves the quality of the education and the prestige of the degree, in short, the same goals as the Madison Initiative.

Now, I could be totally wrong and the profile of our out-of-state students might not be affected. There isn’t a good enough source of hard data to truly back up an argument either way, but if one had to guess, the decision-making of top out-of-state students is more sensitive to small changes in price than the administration seems to think and, without an effort to increase our offerings of merit based scholarships, the standing of the average incoming students will be hurt. The extent might not be significant or measurable, but it will happen because I know that if tuition had been $3,000 a year more for out-of-state students when I was making my college decision, this is one Badger who would be a Nittany Lion.

Patrick McEwen ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in nuclear engineering.