STAFF EDITORIAL

*Updated August 30, 2008

It seems that for Oakland University students there are a few guarantees in life: death, taxes and the ever-increasing tuition rates for higher education.

OU’s board of trustees voted on June 25 to raise the tuition rate for the 2008-09 school year by 6.29 percent for undergraduate students and five percent for graduate students.

Usually, we can be safe in blaming the pitiful economy of the Great Lakes state. Given Michigan’s $920 million deficit, we understand that OU can’t get as much aid from the state of Michigan that it deserves. Currently, OU gets 27 percent of its funding from the state and the rest of the budget has to come from the student tuitions.

This time, it seems as if the state of Michigan’s woeful economy is not the only culprit. It appears as if the board was given the silent treatment by state representatives regarding the amount of money that OU would be given for the upcoming year.

As a result, the board budgeted “conservatively” and underestimated the amount that OU would be given. This left the average student with a tuition hike of about $30 per credit hour.

However, we can live with the tuition increase. It pales in comparison to last year’s 13.9 percent increase and seems necessary to not only maintain but also improve upon our current quality standard of education. It is, after all, the reason that we pay as much as we do in the first place.

What we find especially troubling is what happened three days after the decision was made to increase tuition. On June 28, Michigan lawmakers got together and decided to give a one percent increase in appropriations to all public universities in the state, which includes OU.  

We find it hard to believe that the state had no idea how much would be given, only to have the thought come suddenly on a sunny Saturday morning.

We find it even harder to believe that OU administration and the board of trustees could not have scheduled another meeting to reconsider the tuition increase in lieu of the state’s decision.

Instead of returning the on percent increase in appropriations, which tallies to about $519,329, to current students by lowering the tuition increase, it will be invested in classrooms and labs to benefit future classes.

As previously mentioned, it’s not like the money is going to waste. We’re not particularly upset that future classes will be taught better than we are.

But we feel the freeze of Michigan’s economy as much as anyone else. The one percent appropriation would have better served students by lowering the tuition increase rate, which would have helped out students at a time when the cost of living and education are continually rising.

A tuition increase of this size seems to be too harsh a price for students to pay just because one decision was made only three days after another decision. There have been different reasons for tuition increases of varying legitimacy in the past and a time difference of three days seems be one of the worst.  

At the very least, a poll could have been taken to include students’ wishes in the discussion. If the student body had voted to invest in better classrooms and labs, we would have supported the measure unquestionably.

More likely, the student body would have voted to using the one percent increase in state aid to lower the tuition increase rate.

Whatever the results of the hypothetical poll of the students might have been, we would have welcomed more input into the decision.

Instead, we just feel left out.

In a reponse to the printing of this editorial, Vice President of Finance and Administration John Beaghan offered this explanation for the administration’s decision:

“The 1% appropriation increase ($519k) represents

about .4% (four tenths of a percent) of our projected total tuition

revenue. The editorial suggested the Board should have scheduled another

meeting to reconsider the tuition increase. Considering the lack of

confidence that we’ll receive the additional 1% (let’s see in August 2009 if we

have received all our payments) it doesn’t make sense for the Board to have

additional meetings to adjust the tuition rate from a 6.3% increase to a 5.9%

increase, especially considering they specifically committed the appropriation

increase for needed improvements to student learning space.  There are

many variables in the budget building process; enrollment, appropriation,

utility rates, health insurance rates, etc.  We don’t rebudget our tuition

rates based on fluctuation in these variables, instead we manage the budget

through revenue monitoring, spending controls, etc.”