Letter to the Editor: Tuition raises affect UW students

It was the spring of 2006 when I filled out the paperwork required and submitted the necessary $250.00 check to the University of Washington Tacoma to confirm my attendance. $5,332 was the price of tuition back then. I remember vividly thinking to myself, "I've never seen a thousand dollars before, and they are asking for $1700 every two months. Ridiculous! How can they get away with charging that much for an education in a time when practically every job requires a college degree?" My parents called it the 'ticket to the party'. They used to say, "You need that ticket (college diploma) to get to the party, and if you don't have it you better find a way. You're not going anywhere in life without it." Today, the 'ticket to a party' adage is truer than ever. The economic downturn has made it harder for college graduates to find a job, with 50% unemployed or underemployed after graduation. Time and time again, I see on the news and hear from our civic leaders that "education is the future" and "If we are ever going to get out of this economic mess we are going to need fresh new innovative ideas." It seems as though all bets are on education. Yet instead of making a college degree affordable and therefore accessible for the masses, we have done the exact opposite. The incoming class of 2010-11 will pay $8724 in tuition costs. That is almost 60% more than what I planned for when I sat down with my parents in 2006 to plan how to pay for college and over nine times what inflation has gone up since 2006. Simply put, this model is unpredictable for incoming and current students to plan for. Since the Washington State Legislature (which normally sets tuition rates) delegated partial tuition setting control to our College Universities in 2007, students have seen tuition rise to the maximum allowed by the legislature. In 2007 and 2008 this was 7% and in 2009 and 2010 we saw the cap increases to 14%. What we see here is students' tuition dollars being used, to quote Senator Kilmer Chair of the Senate Higher Education and Workforce Development Committee, as a "de facto rainy day fund." Meanwhile, hardworking employees with families are laid off and students forced to take out more loans or drop out of school as a result of these tuition increases. This year the University Administration is lobbying for full tuition setting authority from the legislature. They use the phrase 'tuition flexibility' as code for an excessive tax increase on students and 'maintaining quality instruction' as a way to do this. However what good does it do to build a Ferrari in a recession when nobody can afford it? Where is the credibility? The timing of these decisions could not be worse for students. Because University Board of Regents make tuition increase decisions in late June, which is less than a month away from when they will go into affect, students who take Summer Quarter have less than 30 days to come up with the funds necessary to supplement these increases. More often than not these students come up with the money through loans, and the average undergraduate graduates with $16,000 in loan debt. What we need from our University Administration is commitment to real solutions and ideas that do not dash the hopes and dreams of our students by increasing loan debt through higher tuition. As Elise Anderson from the Washington Times noted about this unsustainable trend, "getting into the school of your dreams is one thing, paying for it another." We can do better. Tommy Bauer,

Washington '10