YOU'D THINK freshman year was hard enough. All of a sudden, you're doing more reading in a night than you did in a week in high school. You live in a room where the ambient temperature is oddly proportionate to the extreme heat and cold outside. And in the blink of an eye, the indefatigable vortex of tuition payment has made you a starving college student. Oh, the angst. Let's up the ante, though. Imagine having to pay more tuition just for being the low man on the totem pole. It sounds like some sort of twisted joke, but, unfortunately, it's not. At an increasing number of campuses around the nation, the oft-persecuted freshman faces the additional burden of paying more than returning students. Colleges and universities should abandon this so-called "tiered tuition" as a solution to current budget crises caused by.
It's easy to see that the economy is ailing. With the Dow Jones industrial average fluctuating more than Vice president Dick Cheney's electrocardiogram, many families have helplessly watched college funds dwindle. In addition, the College Board announced last week that four-year public colleges and universities across the country have raised their tuition and fees by an average of 9.6 percent. The University is among those schools, and come spring, students will receive a yet to be determined, across the board mid-year tuition increase. The tiered tuition, however, that some schools are employing is not similarly equal
- and that's its biggest problem.
Thankfully, the University has not yet resorted to charging new students more than returning students. (OK, we just abuse the brow-beaten out-of-state students). The recent manifestations of tiered tuition at peer institutions, who have been reeling under a lack of both state appropriations and endowment funds, are outrageous. At these schools, all students face an increase in tuition, but in some cases, the increase is more than five times as much for freshmen than upperclassmen. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, incoming students at Ohio State will pay an 18 percent increase in tuition. Returning students are only responsible for nine percent. New students at Purdue's West Lafayette cam-
pus will be charged 34 percent more versus the decidedly lower 10 percent for everyone else. The most incredulous example comes from Texas A&M where newbies will shell out 27 percent more than last year's students -- that's compared to a paltry 5 percent increase for all other Aggies.
Regrettably, tiered tuition does not appear to be a slowing trend. All the branches of Indiana University and Penn State University plan to implement the plan next fall.
Proponents of tiered tuition like the idea of substantially raising rates for freshmen because students will know what they are getting into. In other words, prospectives will not be lured by low tuition then have the rug pulled out from under them by tuition hikes once they arrive at school. The argument has a glaring flaw. At the schools using tiered tuition, returning students are nonetheless still paying more than they did last year, just at a lower rate than new students. The prospects of such a plan are frightening: If every year freshmen are subjected to an inflated raise in tuition, followed by smaller ones each consecutive year, imagine the possible exponential increase of the cost of an education. It's astronomical.
Officials at schools with a tiered tuition plan may assert that they will provide additional financial aid for incoming students who cannot afford an increase. That's not quite kosher either. Since all students will experience a tuition hike anyway, it would be much more practical -- if schools wish to keep the same projected additional revenue -- for schools to lessen, or even eliminate, the discrepancy between freshmen and upperclassmen. Let every student defray the effects of stingy budgets. It's simple math: Spread an increase over more people, and everyone will pay less. At a minimum, should officials be adamant about charging freshmen more, the difference should be a lot lower than it currently stands in some places. For example, the Chronicle reports that Texas A&M anticipates taking in an additional $33 million in the next five years with its tiered tuition. Surely, the school could lessen the increase for freshmen and up it some for upperclassmen, keeping the same profit.
If public colleges and universities insist on implementing tiered tuition, they should at least make some additional considerations on the behalf of out-of-state students. Out-of-state residents already pay much higher tuition than those of their in-state counterparts, but with tiered tuition being applied to students regardless of residency, new out-of-state students face an exorbitant increase. It's a double whammy of epic proportions.
Schools should avoid tiered tuition like the plague. Prospective students will pass over colleges with it in favor of those without it. And that'll put budgets in an even worse bind than they already are.
(Becky Krystal is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. She can be reached at bkrystal@cavalierdaily.com.)
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