State government and state university officials must "concentrate" on providing world-class institutions while making certain that campuses are affordable for in-state students and taxpaying parents.
Why the emphasis on college affordability? Higher education is increasingly important to our national and state economies. The U.S. Department of Labor projects 45 percent of future jobs will require more than high school diplomas and 33 percent will require four-year degrees or more. Given our recessionary and changing economy, today's workforce knows we must learn so we can earn. USA Today reports adults nationwide are going back to the books for various reasons, with 47 percent returning to college to sharpen job skills, 21 percent to increase pay and another 21 percent to prepare for future promotions.
Other news stories reveal the consumer price index actually declined 1.5 percent over the past 12 months, so it is surprising universities this year raised tuition and fees at all - and especially to levels they did.
Can't state government guarantee affordability through funds or mandates? This year's state budget negotiations exposed a shocking and continuing economic freefall statewide. Losses of billions in state revenues required massive cuts to other state programs and almost forced 4 percent across-the-board cuts for state colleges. By Indiana law, university trustees set tuition and fees. However, in committees, correspondence and conversations, legislators urged administrators to cut costs and minimize increases or flatline tuition and fees. Unlike other states where funding to colleges was slashed, Indiana lawmakers were able to maintain overall higher education funding. To their credit, our universities achieved some efficiencies, but Indiana University students still faced 4.6 percent hikes in 2009-10 and another 4.8 percent increase in 2010-11. News was worse at Purdue, where trustees approved a phased-in $500 student fee as well as 5 percent hikes for each of the next two years. Including the fee, Purdue freshmen were up against an unexpected - and some said an unexplainable - 11.5 percent increase over last year.
Why the focus on IU and Purdue? Most undergraduates statewide - nearly two-thirds - attend IU or Purdue campuses. Just this week, Indiana University announced a record system-wide fall registration of 107,160 students. Purdue reported a 3 percent increase statewide with 74,319 enrolled. Indiana's Commission for Higher Education (ICHE) confirmed most IU and Purdue undergraduates come from Indiana - meaning they and their families already support these Big 10 schools with near-record tax appropriations. In addition, IU and Purdue are unique among our state colleges in that they enjoy generous revenue from research, grants and gifts. Despite receiving strong state support during tough economic times and other sources of outside income, IU and Purdue officials were seemingly unable or unwilling to fulfill students,' parents' and lawmakers' appeals to further contain costs and avoid tuition hikes this year and next.
Why are costs so high? What can be done? Escalating university costs are nothing new. Across Indiana, tuition for years has far outpaced inflation and personal income growth. Statewide, tuition increased an average of 8.6 percent each year since 2000, while inflation averaged 2.7 percent and Hoosier personal incomes rose 3.4 percent annually. Insurance and utilities increase the cost of all operations - including our own family households - but burgeoning campus bureaucracies are also to blame. ICHE records show enrollment at IU and Purdue remained almost unchanged from 1993 to 2008, yet IU added 27.7 percent more non-faculty employees and Purdue's non-teaching staff swelled 23.4 percent during that same time. Lawmakers, including me, share the concern of parents and students upset about tuition spikes, especially given the state of the economy. Record enrollments meant more and more Hoosier households - literally tens of thousands - were counting on our colleges, but being impacted by university officials' actions. IU and Purdue recognized if steps were not taken regarding tuition hikes, they risked delays of construction projects requiring state funding. Media and public response pressured both schools into tuition talks with state leaders.
What did this year's tuition talks really accomplish? IU President Michael McRobbie announced a new plan allowing undergraduate students to lower their tuition by maintaining good grades and making steady progress toward graduation. Purdue President France Cordova followed IU's lead and agreed to rebate half of the $500 student fee, continue middle-income scholarships and enhance financial aid to in-state students. Students and parents may have wanted more to come from recent negotiations; university officials likely wanted to give a lot less. In the end, we struck the best deal we could for the short term to try to balance the need for world class universities and affordable higher education for Hoosiers.
Where do we go from here? Both IU and Purdue agreed with lawmakers on several key principles moving forward: keeping affordability as a fundamental consideration in setting tuition; developing programs to provide certainty of tuition costs over four-year periods; publicly disclosing and discussing any extraordinary increases in tuition or fees with ICHE prior to adoption; presenting student aid data uniformly for easy comparison among colleges and not including non-university loans in those figures; and providing clearer distinctions among teaching, research and administrative staff when preparing and publicly presenting university budgets.
We applied the brakes to skyrocketing tuition and began what will be an ongoing dialogue among state lawmakers and state universities that must in the future include Ball State University, Indiana State University, Ivy Tech Community College, University of Southern Indiana and Vincennes University. Clearly, there is more homework to do on behalf of Indiana students, parents and taxpayers.
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