 "Photo: Anthony Salinas / The Pan American")
Students beware: higher costs to education wait on the horizon.
It’s no secret that the state is facing a bigger budget crunch than was previously anticipated. However, forces are at work, and have been for at least eight years, that may complete a transition of cost burden from the state to the student.
If students and the community let these impending decisions pass by without notice, the consequences will be literally quite costly.
It all started about eight years ago when the state Legislature decided to deregulate tuition. In doing so it allowed all the college governing boards to raise tuition, with virtually no student consent, to strained straining levels.
Some institutions, including the University of Texas and Texas A&M, saw their tuition surge by 110 percent over a few years. Many other public universities raised rates too. However, UTPA opted to not increase by much at all because of the underprivileged socio-economic status of the area.
It must be noted that the reasoning for increasing tuition by such large amounts was to provide a “greater degree of quality” for education. This centered on the idea that increased revenue leads to more funds to hire better quality faculty and pay for other programs that enhance the university experience.
There was an underlying factor concerning deregulation, which was the notion that taxpayers should not share such a huge burden for the cost of maintaining the state’s higher education institutions. Raising tuition by such huge margins allowed the Legislature to allot less in terms of yearly appropriations to the universities. Formula funding, which is the state’s way of determining how much a university gets, decreased for universities. With deregulated tuition becoming a larger funding source the state no longer needed to keep up its end of the bargain.
However, what happened to institutions like UTPA?
Former interim president Charles Sorber and retiring business affairs vice president Jim Langabeer consistently said the university’s budget woes were a “revenue problem, not an expenditure problem.” Sorber’s tenure here was mostly spent tightening up the loose ends around the university, after the institution came dangerously close to being put on Financial Watch by the UT System.
State funding gradually decreased amid the early effects of an economic downtown, leading to the re-regulation of tuition by the state Legislature. However, the legislation was simply a resolution, and is non-binding to the state’s governing boards. The boards, including the UT System Regents, agreed to the resolution, which limits tuition increases to smaller increments. This was the alternative to a tuition freeze suggested by state Democrats, which didn’t go over well with fiscal conservatives.
In fact, State Sen. Judith Zaffirini pushed a proposal that compromised a tuition increase limit (not a freeze), along with an increase in formula funding to compensate for the loss in revenue. The measure didn’t make it through the state’s complex system, which puts ridiculous time limits on legislation.
This leaves UTPA with less funding from the state and students.
With the state soon to take back a large portion of funds from statewide budgets, the university has scrambled to trim expenditures without affecting its mission: education. Faced with this difficult situation, the heroic effort to maintain quality in education continues.
We don’t have to live with this, though. Early voting has begun and Election Day is March 3. With a sizeable delegation in Austin, the Valley can and should fight for better higher educational resources.
Let’s make the demand for increased resources heard now, during the primaries. This will allow higher education to rise up the ranks of important election issues. Expect nothing less from the candidates than a tough fight for the people of the Valley.
If the shift of burden occurs, the local students will not be able to access education as easily as they once could. Higher education would then become a commodity and something for the wealthy.
The Legislature cannot allow universities to become privatized, and the only people who can stop this are voters. Go vote, and demand accessible, affordable education.
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