Long before student government began raising student fees, it was protesting last summer’s hike in tuition. In-state students now pay $278 more, an increase of 8.4 percent since last year, while out-of-state tuition rose by $2,492, a 17.9 percent increase.
The UW administration blamed the tuition increase on the state legislature’s failure to adequately fund higher education. However, limited funds require the establishment of priorities. The recent budget squeeze, caused by the slowing economy, has done just that, and tuition has been shown to be low on the administration’s list.
Last week, in exchange for not being subject to the statewide hiring freeze imposed by Gov. McCallum, the UW System agreed to return approximately $5 million from its approximately $3.35 billion budget. About $1 million of that would come from Madison.
Bad news for students, right?
Fortunately not. The administration promised the refund would “clearly not reduce anything that deals with instruction or research.” Instead, the decisions to cut money would “be based on internal priorities,” with cuts made in administrative areas rather than student services. The administration also suggested that even more efficient cuts would be possible next year, if, as expected, the state budget continues to fall short.
Students can rest assured the administration places a higher priority on instruction and research than they do on their own bureaucracy. But what these promised cuts make obvious is the bureaucracy is more important than lower student tuition.
These cuts in the administrative budget should have come last year, when the university proposed its budget. At the very least, instead of a higher-than-inflation tuition increase to cover last summer’s perceived shortfall, the current cuts in the administration should have been executed. It disgusts us the administration has the hypocrisy to blame the legislature for rising tuition even as they budget themselves easily pared money that has no effect on instruction or research.
If the administration can save $1 million when jobs are at stake, why can’t they do the same when our tuition is on the line? Again we are forced to wonder exactly where students rank on the administration’s list of priorities.
