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Our View: ASU should hold off on tuition hike
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Just stop it. For one year, the Arizona Board of Regents needs to flatly reject every proposed increase in students’ costs to attend Arizona State University and its sister institutions. This includes tuition rates, laboratory and classroom fees and any other charges that the universities impose just to enroll.
Tribune writer Ryan Gabrielson reported Thursday that ASU wants to raise tuition by 10 percent for new freshmen next year. Most continuing students would see their tuition climb “only” 5 percent, but those in speciality fields such as nursing, engineering and business would be forced to pay an extra $600 to $1,000.
We have noted before that an “affordable” college education is becoming an antiquated concept. But charging ahead with rate increases in these woeful economic times smacks of pulling the rug right out from under Arizona residents when they need their public universities even more.
Periods of business contraction and higher unemployment often force people to seek to new or better-paying careers that require additional college education. Higher costs to obtain that education put up new barriers for potential students whose financial resources probably are shrinking.
The universities and the board of regents are ignoring their long-term best interests if they don’t put at least a temporary brake on the money train.
The state Legislature already has entertained ideas on how to assert at least some control over tuition and other costs because of huge increases in recent years. It won’t take much more political pressure for one or more of those ideas to become law or to be inserted into the state constitution.
A stand-alone university system has served Arizona pretty well in the past. But that independence could be threatened if the board of regents doesn’t exercise some prudent restraint now.
Stop the tuition increases for one year.
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