Congress to address national tuition hikes

Members of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Work Force are currently addressing this problem as they consider the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.

The HEA was established in 1965 to ensure the availability of a university education to students with limited financial means and is re-evaluated every five years.

This year, Congress is promising to renew the HEA "by emphasizing results, quality, affordability and access," according to the Web site for the Committee of Education and the Work Force.

Universities are becoming "more and more difficult to access," University of Maryland Provost William Destler said.

On average, at public four-year universities, tuition is up 9.6 percent from last year, while at private universities, rates have increased 5.8 percent.

Labeled the "College Cost Crisis" by representatives John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Howard "Buck" McKeon (R-Calif.) in a September report on the issue, universities are struggling to fund academic programs and faculty salaries and have been forced to raise tuition.

Many universities blame state budget cuts for their fiscal difficulties.

In these tight economic times, state legislators have been forced to cut expenditures wherever possible. Consequently, higher education has come to be viewed as part of the state's discretionary budget, Destler said.

Pennsylvania State University spokeswoman Amy Neil said the university's 9.8 percent tuition increase is a result of "continuing decreases in state appropriations."

Penn State has also faced two mid-year recisions.

To make up the difference, the university has had to do some serious belt-tightening to avoid even greater tuition increases.

Penn State's administration has consolidated some departments and opted not to fill some faculty vacancies while cutting some outreach programs.

Additionally, Penn State implemented a "tuition differential program" this year, requiring freshmen and sophomores to "pay an additional fee on top of the tuition increase," Neil said.

So while 9.8 percent is a substantial rise in tuition, the university has said that this number is 2.7 percent lower than what would have been necessary without the budget alterations.

Neil called the rising cost of higher education a nationwide problem that is deterring qualified students -- particularly those from low-income families -- from applying to college.

Boehner and McKeon noted in their report that "cost factors prevent 48 percent of college-qualified high school graduates from attending a four-year institution."

Such deterrence is a dangerous prospect when one considers how higher education has been "a real mechanism by which people of minimal means can climb up the economic ladder," Destler said.

Education is the "great equalizer in our nation," Boehner and McKeon wrote. "It can bridge social, economic, racial and geographic divides like no other force."

The government is refusing to shoulder the blame for national rises in tuition.

While many universities are pointing fingers at state and federal legislatures for their fiscal difficulties, the federal government is holding the schools themselves responsible, citing many schools' superfluous spending.

One priority of the HEA is "holding colleges accountable for cost increases -- without over-burdensome federal intrusion."

If the Affordability in Higher Education Act, proposed by Boehner, is passed, universities will face federal sanctions -- such as the government's retraction of student aid -- for tuition rates that rise too high, too quickly.

Neil called these restrictions "cost controls" and said that the federal government does not understand how state budgeting works.

Regardless of where blame lies, Penn State and other universities are feeling the pinch, and tuition hikes at many schools cannot compensate for appropriation reductions.

For example, at Maryland, only 40 percent of budget cuts were made up for in tuition, and some of the funds cut were simply lost.

Maryland has had to close dining halls, dental services and "a whole host of student services," Destler said.

Additionally, Maryland's freshman class "has a slightly smaller percentage of students from out of state," likely because of tuition increases, he added.

Moreover, the university's faculty and staff have not seen a salary increase in the past two years -- a fact which threatens the university's ability to retain high-caliber professors.

At Penn State, the number of students on financial aid has risen 13 percent in the last 10 years. Maryland and the University of Michigan also cite increases.

Although the cost of higher education is on the rise for all sorts of institutions, private universities are feeling the financial squeeze significantly less.

Private universities such as Penn rely on endowments and other private sources of funding, so state fiscal pinches are not as detrimental to them.

At Penn, tuition rose 4.8 percent from last year, which is a typical increase, Director of Student Financial Services William Schilling said.

Moreover, "Penn's rate of increase has been lower than the average private increase in all but two years, and has been lower than the average public increase five of the years," Executive Director of Provost Administrative Affairs Bonnie Gibson wrote in an e-mail.

Congress hopes to remedy the College Cost Crisis through the reauthorization of the HEA this year and to broaden access to higher education as well.

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