The guaranteed-tuition proposal that Executive Vice President and Provost Pam Benoit and Vice President for Finance and Administration Stephen Golding are going to present to Student Senate might seem like an idea to help students’ financial troubles, but sadly it is just another effort by the administration and the Board of Trustees to make it easier to raise tuition.
At first glance, the proposal seems like a great one, because it would have students paying the same tuition rate for four years. However, by freezing tuition for each incoming class, it creates a culture of apathy among students who no longer have any incentive to oppose continuous tuition increases. This would allow the Board of Trustees to continue raising tuition from year to year with the knowledge that the majority of students won’t have a reason to care, simply because they won’t be affected.
Instead of allowing the Board of Trustees to subvert the power of students with parlor tricks, we need to be realistic and start discussing where budget cuts can be made. The reason tuition is going up is because state funding has been cut, but university spending has not followed suit. Hopefully, state funding can be restored, but if not, we need to take a hard look at our administrative costs and decide what we need most to provide a quality education.
This proposal is absolutely not in the best interest of students. In fact, it seeks to undermine them. Any short-term gains in preventing tuition from going up now will not be worth it, because it puts students at an institutional disadvantage later on down the road.
I ask that you go to the Student Senate meeting this week and let the administration know that this proposal is both misleading and unacceptable.
Matthew Farmer is a junior studying political science at Ohio University.
