Whining flowed freely down State Street to the state Capitol Wednesday afternoon.

Shouting some not-so-clever slogans like “Senate, please! Don’t steal our degree!” approximately 350 students went to the Legislature looking for a handout yesterday. At issue was the Assembly’s proposed 8 percent in-state tuition increase and 23 percent increase to out-of-state tuition. The students, who claim the increases would be financially devastating, demanded the state Senate heed their plight and cheapen UW education.

Ironically, the boisterous students could well have run into UW lobbyists campaigning for exactly the opposite at the legislature. Threatened with an unprecedented 8 percent budget cut from the state, UW regents are faced with a series of bad options: Sacrifice quality or reduce access. Student activists apparently prefer the former; the regents prefer the latter. The regents’ message to state legislators is two-fold: Don’t cut so deep; but if you must, at least let us act to preserve quality.

Unfortunately, the student protesters’ message yesterday will only undermine the university’s efforts to maintain quality. The core of UW’s finances come from the state government. (Alumni giving, some licensing revenue and tuition fill out the cost of education.) While the Board of Regents is beholden to alumni and legislative generosity for most of their funds, the regents ostensibly have control over student tuition. However, for the past several years, the Legislature has played politics with tuition and put a series of caps and freezes on in-state tuition.

Needing funds from somewhere, the Board of Regents has looked to out-of-state students to shoulder the burden. The result is the current imbalance: Resident students at UW pay some of the cheapest tuition in the country while out-of-state students pay tuition rates second only to Michigan among public Big 10 universities. If approved, next year’s tuition increase will make out-of-state tuition the most expensive in the Big 10.

Despite the student protesters’ cries to the contrary, world-class higher education is not a right and should not be taken for granted. As evidenced by the excellent financial value of a UW-Madison degree, it is extraordinary expensive to educate people on a level akin to UW-Madison, regardless of who foots the bill. Maintaining excellence requires constant investments — the financial status quo advocated by Assembly Republicans and protesters alike is insufficient for upholding the value of UW degrees.

Unfortunately, UW’s efforts to invest in its students and itself have been repeatedly rebuffed at the capitol. Now, with the short-term viability of state coffers in trouble, the state Assembly is looking to mortgage the state’s future by severely cutting its support for UW. To defuse the potential election issue this fall, the Assembly is proposing to cap tuition at unsustainably low levels, noticeably forfeiting UW quality.

Instead of rallying purely for lower tuition, yesterday’s protesters should have focused on preserving quality education — a much more important long-term priority for both students and the state. Student loans are much easier to pay back if they are backed by a valuable UW degree. The state’s economy will continue to benefit from a local world-class higher-education system.

The proposed cuts to UW’s budget are bad public policy and should be rejected. But equally unwise is the tuition caps presently accompanying the proposed $100 million cuts. The student government leaders who organized yesterday’s protests need to get on the same page as the UW regents.

Rather than highlighting the tuition caps as especially destructive, students should be focused on the larger cuts behind the proposed tuition increases. Even then, students must be prepared to accept modest tuition increases in exchange for a world-class education.

Catchy chants like “Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Tuition hikes have got to go!” may fire up passersby in Library Mall but utterly fail to capture the complexity of next year’s UW budget.

Alexander Conant ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in economics.