In the March 26 edition of The Post, it was announced that President Roderick McDavis would be considering whether or not to pass on a tuition increase for approval by the Board of Trustees.
Like many other students, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. Do students not pay enough already? According to the U.S. Department of Education, Ohio University is the 15th most expensive public four-year university in the United States, and tuition at OU is already almost double of what it was ten years ago.
Who knows where it will be in another 10 years considering the enthusiasm the current administration seems to have for increasing tuition at literally every opportunity.
Students should be angry with this. The proposed tuition increase is wrong on three levels: it is unfair, anti-democratic and highly irresponsible. While many students are working multiple jobs and taking on tens of thousands of dollars in loans, there are at least 84 administrators at OU who rake in six-figure salaries, six of whom make over a quarter of a million dollars a year!
Students contribute at least as much to the university as many of these administrators, and yet students go broke to pay for these exorbitant salaries. If that is not unfair, I don’t know what is.
Furthermore, this proposed tuition hike is a creation of the secretive Budget Planning Council, a group of 16 people who make decisions about how students’ money is spent without almost any transparency at all. Only two undergraduate students sit on this committee: the president of Student Senate and one student trustee (who is appointed by the governor of Ohio).
Considering all of the talk we hear from top administrators about their commitment to “shared governance,” it leaves me scratching my head to think of how such an affront to the interests of students could happen with nearly no student input whatsoever.
Perhaps the worst thing about this proposed tuition hike is that it is incredibly irresponsible. Last year, total student loan debt surpassed $1 trillion (that’s 12 zeros!) in the United States, becoming the country’s largest source of consumer debt. Worse, roughly 10 percent of that debt was originated since 2010, and federal student loan interest rates are expected to double in July.
Furthermore, thanks to the diligent work of student loan industry lobbyists, it is impossible to expunge student loans in bankruptcy, making student loans especially burdensome.
As a result, the student loan debt bubble is inflating incredibly fast. This is scary.
In fact, many prominent economists are predicting that the burst of the student loan debt bubble will be the origin of the next major economic crisis. In the context of a growing national student loan debt crisis, it would be shockingly irresponsible for the Board of Trustees to increase tuition by the maximum legal limit of 3.5 percent for the third time since the 2010-2011 academic year.
For students who are interested in learning more about the student debt crisis and what they can do about it, there will be screening of the short documentary Default about the abuses of the student loan industry this Thursday, April 5 at 7:00 p.m. in Walter 145.
After the film, there will be a panel discussion on increasing tuition, the university’s budget and the student debt crisis.
Tyler Barton is a senior studying chemistry.
