On Friday, the Board of Trustees approved the OHIO Guarantee Program (previously called guaranteed tuition), despite a student protest blockading its bus the day before in opposition to the plan.
In response, two members of the board —Chair Sandra Anderson and Vice Chair David Brightbill — offered to meet with three student delegates from the Ohio University Student Union to discuss their list of demands, which included stopping the guaranteed tuition plan.
Not surprisingly, Anderson and Brightbill were not interested in ceding any ground on these demands, but what was most infuriating was the manner in which they did it.
Megan Marzec, a junior studying studio art and one of the delegates at the meeting, said the trustees condescended to the students and suggested the students hadn’t done as much research as they had, specifically on guaranteed tuition.
Well, here is some research.
According to Ohio Substitute House Bill 59, the OHIO Guarantee allows the university to increase tuition for each cohort by the state’s tuition cap plus the average rate of inflation, which over time gives the university the capacity to make the four-year total cost of tuition higher than under the current model.
The OHIO Guarantee also punishes those who do not complete their degree in four years by forcing them to pay more after four years. More dubious is that the Guarantee program requires students to pay a higher flat rate their first two years, as opposed to a student under the current model, whose tuition would gradually increase each year. So, students who have to drop out or transfer in those years would be saddled with more debt than they would be under the current tuition model.
Students already at risk for dropping out of the university — students of color, students of low socio-economic status and first-generation students — are those most affected.
This is especially troubling, because the four-year graduation rate for African-American men in 2012 at OU was 35 percent, compared to 49 percent for the entire university, according to OU’s Office of Institutional Research.
Anderson and Brightbill further patronized the delegates by suggesting that they take some time to read the University Completion Plan, which allegedly addresses these concerns.
Following their sage advice, I did some digging. As it turns out, the University Completion Plan is not, well… complete.
There was an overview of the plan in the board’s agenda for the Jan. 24 meeting, but it is light on details. The full plan will not be released until spring 2014.
What is apparent is that the plan makes no mention of how the university will adjust its retention strategies for students of color and students of low socio-economic status. It makes no mention of how the university will address the obvious consequences of the OHIO Guarantee.
In fact, a university completion plan is required by every institute of higher education in Ohio, regardless of whether or not it is implementing a guaranteed tuition plan.
Even if the University Completion Plan included new programs to assist these specific at-risk populations, the university should be implementing them regardless.
Instead, the board chose to do the exact opposite by approving the OHIO Guarantee that just makes it harder for those programs to be successful.
It certainly seems like Anderson and Brightbill lied to students, but honestly, they probably just didn’t do their research.
Matt Farmer is senior studying political science and education. Do you think the trustees respect students? Email him at mf291209@ohiou.edu.
