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An Academic Disconnect

By Kellyn Brown

On a 4-3 vote, the Montana Board of Regents voted last week to raise tuition at Montana’s flagship campuses. Regent Todd Buchanan, who opposed the increase, said it best when he told his colleagues prior to their decision that “we better prepare ourselves for one heck of a conversation in our communities because one is coming.” Frankly, there should be.

It could begin with a question: “How can the regents raise tuition on Montana students to fill in their budget gaps when nearly every other non-subsidized business has had to make cuts to survive?”

I’m a product of the state’s university system, as is every one of my newsroom employees save for one. I still believe the cost of my tuition was money well spent, although like colleges everywhere there were a few obscure fees tacked on to the bill that could now be considered a waste. Yet I paid them with a sense of indifference, knowing that the economy was stable and the job market flush with opportunities. Times have changed.

Incoming freshmen now asked to pay roughly $2,000 a year are well aware of the recession, and current students are even more cognizant. Many are concerned about how they’re going to line up a job and pay back their student loans on top of everything else. If I was still a student, the Regents’ move wouldn’t sit well. But even as an adult and taxpayer (with no children), it still doesn’t sit right.

Getting a degree at one of Montana’s two largest universities remains a bargain for in-state students. And the 3 percent increase (the universities had asked to raise it 5 percent) probably won’t deter any of those who want a diploma. After all, it comes out to about $100 extra a year. Nonetheless, at a certain point academia has to acknowledge economic realities and, with this latest move, it again appears to be the last to do so.

Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer lobbied hard for the schools to freeze tuition, pointing out that, “while the rest of the nation is cutting budgets for higher education, the MUS (Montana University System) budget was increased.” And while that’s a politically popular position to take, that doesn’t mean it isn’t right.

Despite the increase, University of Montana President George Dennison said he was disappointed that the regents didn’t raise tuition 5 percent. Regent Lynn Morrison-Hamilton, who voted for the proposed higher increase, said students “want us to pay attention to institutional quality.” And even some students endorsed the higher tuition costs, pointing out that it had remained stable for two years.

But with the approval of just 3 percent, I wonder when it will stop. I’m all for supporting higher education, but it appears that the universities are unwilling to make cuts as the cupboards have become increasingly bare.

No one wants to see jobs or services lost at our biggest schools. Yet the state’s community colleges proposed, and were granted, the ability to leave their respective tuitions flat, and they are arguably more important in this economy, where a number of laid-off employees are receiving two-year degrees as they retrain for other jobs.

A freeze would have provided an acknowledgement by university officials that we are all in this together. Instead, while an economy has forced sacrifices across the board in the public and private sectors, the university system, whether deserved, appears utterly disconnected by raising prices during the worst recession in a half century.