With the news coming last week that there will most certainly be a tuition hike for the 2011-12 school year, members of the CSUS Board of Trustees should be ashamed of themselves.
Last September, members of the Finance and Administration Committee recommended a tuition freeze to ease the financial burden on students in a withering economy. Though circumstances have changed in Hartford, both with a new governor and a reinvigorated legislature, they most certainly have not for our student peers here in New Britain.
The Board of Trustees must act as a figurehead of the university system it represents, not a doddering collection of suits bending to the slightest of political winds. We hoped that this group of individuals would represent our interests at the state level rather than engage in the games that brought us to our present circumstances. We were foolish and wrong, they failed us.
The proposed hike begs the question: is anyone really surprised? Given the circumstances, no one should be.
There’s a sense of urgency surrounding the state’s budget situation and what needs to be done to make ends meet. How is the school going to afford to pay its teachers? How will the school pay for the tools and technology needed to run a 21st century university? These are reasonable questions that allude to a debate worth having.
But if you were naive enough to believe that CSUS tuition rates would stay the same, you are hopefully in the minority. Any time that a state institution tells you that they will freeze prices but still leave the option open to raise the rates, it’s can be assumed they were just saying so to keep people happy and quiet.
Happy and quiet indeed; despite 11 straight years of tuition increases, our peers have remained silent. Meanwhile, these colleagues substitute a slow and incremental financial death for a swift and striking one.
Members of the board justify our present circumstance by highlighting the fact that CCSU is still among the least expensive universities in the northeast. But these officials know that the average public university student spends much more time in residence than their private university counterparts. So which will it be, exorbitant tuition for four years or marginally increasing tuition for six?
We expect higher participation in public policymaking from our fellow students and a greater degree of advocacy from our representatives within the Board of Trustees, but we haven’t seen it. Until we do, we’re going to see CSUS leadership parade around their false tuition freeze publicity to raise student body morale.
It’s apparent to this staff that the people who are being affected by these decisions will be the last to help prevent a future gaffe like this from happening again.
