The United States is apparently in a recession. Home sales fell to their lowest level ever just three months ago. The DOW fell to its lowest ever intraday point, briefly resting at just 998.5 points in May. Unemployment was recorded at 9.6 percent in June. In theory, people everywhere have tightened their belts and made do with less.
Well, the university has too. Faced with huge budget cuts and loss of funding, the Board of Regents had to come up with ways to make up the deficit. They decided one way to do it was to raise tuition, and raise tuition they did: this year’s costs are 5.5 percent more than last year’s, which were 5.5 percent more than the year before that.
That sucks. Nobody likes paying tuition, and the fact that it continues to rise with no end in sight makes getting a higher education look less appealing. While it may still be true that those with a college degree earn more than those without, if you can’t get a job it doesn’t matter. New graduates are having harder times getting jobs than those with experience, and older workers who may have retired are hanging on to their jobs to get a little extra income, making the job market even more precarious.
On top of higher tuition, this year students at the University of Wisconsin are also paying higher fees due to the Madison Initiative, which may help a few but does no favors to the students whose parents earn more than $80,000 a year. This means that tuition costs more than ever before at UW: Just like it did last year and just like it inevitably will next year.
These price hikes were the things I thought about as I lamented over the fact that Rec Sports upped the cost of a Group-X membership from last year. Sure, they may have added a class or two, but really? Another $10 a school year? I expected the football ticket price increase, but Group-X caught me off guard. I then realized that my moped parking permit also cost $10 more than it did last year, and that the parking ticket I inevitably get will be more expensive too. It seems like costs are higher in every area of this campus but the services rendered haven’t improved.
What it will take to get out of the recession is anyone’s guess. The operating budget doesn’t look like it will make a complete recovery anytime soon, but charging students more to get the same education isn’t the way to solve the problem. Neither is inflating the price on the non-essential things that make this campus enjoyable. The more students have to pay to get the UW experience, the less excited about the experience they will be.
To some students on this campus, money isn’t real. Their parents pay for their education, they don’t need to get jobs, and college is about having fun. To others though, college is a financial burden, but something to work their asses off for anyways. But for all of us, it is a recession, and raising prices on our Madison experience is not the answer to ending it.
Allegra Dimperio ([email protected]) is a sophomore intending to major in journalism.
