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Volume 41, Issue 1
March 11, 2003
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March 11, 2003
“Changing directions” hard on student’s
wallets
By Mark Gailey
Guest Writer
Universities in Arizona have a new “friend” the student’s
wallet.
This has taken obvious importance over extending the availability of higher
education to both in and out of state students.
Faced with crippling state budget cuts, the Arizona Board of Regents went
groping for funds, and the whopping $1,000 hike in tuition fees was born.
A 39 percent tuition hike, the largest ever in state history, is expected
to slap current and prospective students come fall 2003.
The tuition hike is part of what the board is calling “Changing Directions,”
but I’m calling it the middle finger in the very face of students.
This was is intended to improve the quality of the universities and provide
more financial aid to the terrible aid currently available.
A scanty $1,000 will do, and both current and prospective student are
expected to ante up.
An increase, alien to standard inflation, will have disastrous ramifications
on both students and community.
A $1,000 increase will choke the students who are financially challenged,
nuking the economic (and potentially racial) diversity of universities,
and all but segregate student population into Daddy Warbucks’ elitist.
A $1,000 increase will groom the universities of the financially self-supporting
students and force those who have skated by without student loans to submit
to the dismal and wretched mechanics of financial aid.
A $1,000 increase will force international students to meet new tuition
demands or lose their visa and return home.
Meanwhile, many of ASU’s faculty were just handed a lion’s share
in salary increases ranging all over the map.
I wonder if ASU’s board thinks that the loss of faculty and diminishing
quality of the university can be justified by the bottom line on their
VIP’s paychecks.
Good grief!
The Arizona Board of Regents must have been nursing the politician’s
milk when they thought 39 percent was a good number.
From what muck-bucket of logic was a tuition hike plucked when the Board
of Regents sought to resolve financial problems while maintaining their
long-term goal of increasing the availability and access to higher education?
The hypocrisy in state dealings regarding the educational budgets must
have had a hypnotic effect.
The State Budget cuts are a resounding assertion that the state has deemed
education too expensive and what is worse is that politicians continue
to think that acting as though education is a top priority will band-aid
the wound.
If the state continues to defecate on itself because of education or ignorance
then the budget has spoken.
As ignorance in the community increases, Arizona can pat its own back.
The upshot, “Changing Directions,” is just slapping the face
of those fortunate enough to foot the bill, knowing that the cost of ignorance
will always be more than the cost of education.
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