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High Tuition/High Aid Policy is Highway Robbery
by Gregory Lauer
In the political hubris of the last legislative season, Governor Arne Carlson banded together with a former legislator and representative and proposed the high tuition/high aid policy for higher education. Far from being a bold, forward-thinking funding paradigm for the future, Carlson's near-sighted tunnel vision threatens to make a University degree a distant dream for most middle-class, Minnesotan families.
The goal of Carlson's ghoulish nightmare is decent enough--increase educational opportunities for the poorest families on the economic landscape. The plan works something like this: by raising tuition at public institutions like the 'U' or St. Cloud State to stratospheric levels, more money is available for financial aid in the form of grants and loans. Unfortunately, backers of high tuition/high aid are mortgaging their initiative on the backs of the shrinking middle class.
To shamelessly steal from the in-your-face, get-off-your-butt motivational speaker, Susan Powter, I must protest, "STOP THE INSANITY!"
At Carlson's urging, former state legislator John Brandl and former U.S. Representative Vin Weber recently proposed sweeping changes to deal with anticipated budget deficits at the state level in the coming years. The dynamic duo is urging Carlson to slash spending by $1.2 billion by 2001, and education is slated to take a $500 million hit. Higher education's slice of the budget pie declined from an all-time high of 16 percent in 1987 to its present 12 percent, yet visionaries like Brandl and Weber are calling for another round of slash-and-burn policies. Worse still, Brandl and Weber want to radically overhaul appropriations to the University. Currently, the 'U' receives approximately $1 billion every biennium, 90 percent of which is allocated directly and the remaining 10 percent of which is set aside for students in the form of grants and loans. Under the proposal, the University's share would plummet to 30 percent, while financial aid would skyrocket. If this draconian measure passes, tuition would rise sharply to cover the huge reduction in direct state appropriations.
This nefarious shell game must be exposed as the fraudulent funding scheme it is. The best method of insuring financial accessibility at public institutions like the University is to keep tuition low. Before sending the current system to the salvage yard of ideas from yesteryear, politicos should initiate small refinements like tightening eligibility standards for financial aid. Unfortunately, modern-day Robin Hoods lurking at the State Capitol are advocating a radical new system where we steal from the poor to help the poorer. Since 1990, the total of tuition loans has topped $100 billion, and the latest congressional cuts will exacerbate this trend.
Many students choose the 'U' because of its affordability, but sadly enough the muckrakers and social engineers in St. Paul ignore this fact. Simply put, the 'U' will price itself out of the educational market under the high tuition/high aid plan. While Harvard may be able to offer 70 percent of its students some form of financial aid, the annual price tag exceeds $27,000. This is not a model the 'U' should follow.
The former chancellor of Minnesota State Universities, Terrence MacTaggart, argued against a similar high tuition/high aid proposal that was circulating in the educational community in 1994. At Metropolitan State University, for example, increased financial aid packages would have been awarded to roughly 1,000 students at the cost of increasing tuition for 7,000 other students. That hardly seemed like an equitable solution.
Tuition increases at the University since the early '80s total a whopping 264 percent (and recent action by the Board of Regents will tack on another 7.5 percent). By comparison, the Consumer Price Index jumped 71 percent during this time. Another tuition hijacking is not in the students' best interest, although administrators and politicians like Carlson just don't get it. W. Phillips Shively, in his state of the Arts, Sciences, and Engineering address, highlighted this callous disregard for students by maintaining, "We could, in a sense, have our cake and eat it too."
A high tuition/high aid policy will not serve the best interests of Minnesota, and Carlson would do well to ignore the ramblings of his blue-ribbon advisors.
In the 1994 gubernatorial campaign, John Marty, the DFL-endorsed candidate, ran a series of political attack ads that ended with the familiar refrain, "That darn Arne!" It's a shame more of us weren't listening because he's still our darn governor, and he hopes to make the University darn more expensive.
