Letter: Administration's Freezing Tuition Proposal Bad for Students

This letter is in response to the article, “Student Senate hears more details on guaranteed tuition.” The guaranteed tuition proposal that Provost Pam Benoit and Vice President Stephen Golding presented to Student Senate may seem like an idea to help students’ financial troubles, but sadly it is just another effort by the administration and the Board of Trustees to make it easier to raise tuition.At first glance, the proposal seems like a great one because it would have students paying the same tuition rate for four years. However, by freezing tuition for each incoming class, it creates a culture of apathy among students who no longer have any incentive to oppose continuous tuition increases.  This would allow the Board of Trustees to continue raising tuition from year-to-year, with the knowledge that the majority of students won’t have a reason to care, simply because they won’t be effected.Guaranteed tuition would also mean guaranteed tuition increases. In the article, Golding talks about how it would include, “tuition increases that are measured against inflation over 10 years,” which essentially means that tuition will go up every year, regardless of if the university actually needs it to or not. This model is based on the assumption that they would never consider freezing tuition, much less lower it. I find it deceptive for Golding to suggest that this could eventually lower the cost of education, because it could also very well have the opposite effect.Instead of allowing the Board of Trustees to subvert the power of students with creative accounting, we need to be realistic and start discussing where budget cuts can be made. Tuition is going up because state funding has been cut, but university spending has not followed suit. We can hope that state funding be restored, but if not, we need to take a hard look at our administrative costs and decide what we need most to provide a quality education.This proposal is absolutely not in the best interest of students. In fact, it seeks to undermine them. Any short term gains in preventing tuition from going up now will not be worth it, because it puts students at an institutional disadvantage later on down the road.As Jared Henderson put it, “Don’t be scared into agreeing to something you don’t want to agree to.” Well, I do not agree with this model and I hope that you too will let the administration know that this proposal is both misleading and unacceptable.Matthew Farmer is a junior studying Political Science at Ohio University and President of the Residents' Action Council