2008 Woodie Awards
Students shouldn't pay for mismanagement
{Editorial}
- Page 1 of 1
Money makes the world go 'round. We know this. So when it came time to up the ante for on-campus parking, we knew the money was needed to finance lot maintenance, UPD and additional parking solutions - all things we need.
We just weren't expecting a 38.5 percent increase in one year.
A lot of universities pay less than what we now do - $180 for the year-long yellow pass - but many pay a lot more as well: Students at the University of California Berkeley pay as much as $1,164 per year just to park on campus.
The problem isn't that the parking fee is rising; it is that all of our fees are rising simultaneously - fast.
And with all of the dramatic increases in tuition and fees during the last few years, we're beginning to understand why the Seawolf is the color of money.
After all, college is a business.
But even corporations don't raise their prices as much as the 50 percent increase in tuition we've seen since 1999, or the 70-plus percent increase in fees at UAA during the same period.
In fact, Anchorage-area inflation was a mere 4.2 percent last year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index, and that was significantly higher than it has been in years past.
Considering that there have been relatively low-lying inflation rates in Anchorage during the last few years and some pretty eyebrow-raising budget surpluses at the state level-there is an estimated $200 million surplus this fiscal year - some might think students at the state's university, which trains tomorrow's workforce, would be offered a reprieve from the increasing costs of operation.
They would be wrong.
Sure, state legislators shoulder some of the blame; they trim the edges off the university's requested budget every year. Despite giving the university the largest funding increase in its history this year - 13.8 percent - the overall approved budget for fiscal year 2007 was still $9.3 million less than what the board of regents requested, totaling $282.5 million in state appropriations.
Certainly that $9.3 million was destined to stave off the $50-parking fee increase here at UAA. Right.
Parking fees were likely to go up regardless of the legislature's decision, barring a blank check issued to the university, because there is little incentive for the university to use state money for improvements when students can foot the bill.
That might be the reason that, despite having about 5,000 more students than UAF, UAA got a paltry 35.9 percent of the budget in fiscal year 2006, while UAF got nearly half - 47.4 percent. The university's stated reason for this discrepancy is that UAF is a more research-intensive campus.
If administrators were truly concerned with students' financial well-being, wouldn't they let the money follow the students?
Instead, UAA struggles with a hiring freeze in the College of Arts and Sciences even though we pay increasingly higher costs each year not only in tuition, which is statewide, but also in fees, which are campus-specific.
And students really are paying more of the costs of operation than in the past; it is not inflation alone. In fiscal year 1990, students paid 8.4 percent of the costs of operation through tuition and fees, while the state paid 60.1 percent, according to the Proposed FY07 Operating Budget Distribution Plan. This fiscal year, it was estimated that students would pay 14 percent of the costs, while the state would pay only 42.9 percent, according to the same document.
Sure, fixed costs are rising - fuel, healthcare, and salaries - but why are we paying a larger percentage of those costs? The state increases its funding each year, but evidently it is not able to keep up with the breakneck rate at which administrators raise our tuition and fees.
The real problem here isn't the state under funding the university. The problem is a bureaucracy run amok.
Consider this: UA Statewide, which manages the campuses, received $56.2 million in fiscal year 2006. To put that into perspective, UAA's main campus, by far the largest in the UA system, got $201.7 million the same year, despite budget problems in the CAS that led to the current hiring freeze. Now our students are facing larger class sizes and fewer course offerings as a result.
In essence, Statewide got more than a quarter of the money that UAA did, and none of it goes toward paying the salary of a single classroom instructor.
Of course, somebody needs to run the show, but how much can it possibly cost to manage the university? Scrap that - how much should it cost?
What we want is for the university to be run efficiently, without unnecessary bureaucrats accomplishing unnecessary tasks.
At the very least, don't make us pay for them.