Squeezing hope

Tuition at the Kansas’ six state universities will increase at least five percent next year, the first general increase in five years. State aid to the universities is expected to drop six percent.
The legislature squeezes, tuition goes up.
At KU, K-State, Pittsburg and Emporia State, undergraduate tuition will increase five percent; at Wichita State, six percent and at Ft. Hays State, seven percent.
In the past five years, the Consumer Price Index has increased 20 percent and the Higher Education Price Index is up 14 percent..
Student tuition payments are estimated to outrun state aid by more than $60 million next year. State aid to the universities is to drop $43 million, from $742.2 million to $699.1 million. Tuition is estimated to increase from $753 million to $760.4 million.
Here are new tuition rates per semester, approved in mid-June by the Board of Regents:
Kansas University, increased from $5,046 to $5,298; K-State, from $4,744 to $4,981; Wichita State, from $3,421 to $3,623; Emporia State from $2,639 to $2,770; Pittsburg State, from $2,918 to $3,064; and Fort Hays State, from $2,073 to $2,218.
*
In most cases, tuition is less than half the cost of attending school. At a recent meeting of the William Allen White Foundation in Lawrence, overall expenses were outlined during a discussion of the need for KU scholarships.
An account of expenses for KU students in the recent school year will reflect expenses at the state’s other universities:
– Tuition for Kansas residents, $10,182; (out-of-state, $26,393);
– Fees, $966 ( for student health, campus transportation subsidy, student recreation, and so forth);
– Housing, $11,262;
– Books, $1,076;
– Transportation, $1,892;
– “Personal” expenses, $1,188;
– Total for in-state students, $26,566;
– Total for non-residents, $42,777.
These costs are up about 40 percent since 2010. At that time, state legislators began to cut taxes and carve budgets. Higher education would get less, students would pay more ‒ and borrow more.
*
Republican legislators in charge acknowledge the pattern and seem unlikely to reverse course, although the starvation policy set during the Brownback years has been pulled back slightly.
Meanwhile, things lost will take years if not generations to replace: The professors and teachers who fled disparagement and disappointment; staff who could no longer afford to work for less; administrators who could watch no longer as institutions of achievement and stature were ground away, and as colleagues left for places that would embrace learning, not stifle it.
Tuition increases signal a larger problem. They foreshadow a place that weakens attempts to understand more our civilization, a legislature that dismisses the pursuit of reason, or views experimenting with ideas as a needless frill. A place of sagging education is a place that fails to give the life of every day a certain dignity and purpose.
Many legislators remain proud of the disparities in education finance; a four-year college is no longer necessary, they say. The trend in post-secondary education is toward trade schools, technical colleges and the quicker, less costly two-year associate’s degree. This is important, given the increasing press of student debt.
That may be. But we also need a climate of longer-term learning, an environment that says history has something to tell us, that the Earth is round, that happenings abroad are of consequence in our lives, and that character is still as precious, if not more, than specialized knowledge; vision is more than something arrived at through a well-ground lens.
Universities touch all of us, starting with the students, our most hopeful resource. They may be a line item in the budget but they can underline life in Kansas by offering the broadest education to the next generations, and not at a crippling personal cost.