Stop Outrageous Tuition Increases

From the Tribune “A freshman who started four years ago who is a senior today has seen a 70 percent increase in tuition. No parent would predict tuition to go up that fast.’’

A senior in their fourth year has seen tuition increases of over 73% since they originally chose to enroll in an Arizona university!  At the same time, inflation has increased an average 2.43% per year since 2001.  Tuition has increased for a fourth year student 1093% FASTER THAN INFLATION.  This is BAIT AND SWITCH tuition increases when a student is enrolled (and in the middle of their coursework) there are substantial tuition increases when they have limited ability to change universities or just drop out. 

Catalog Year Tuition would require Arizona Universities to post tuition costs in the annual catalog and could not raise them faster than the inflation rate while a student is enrolled.  This would give the same protection to tuition from unexpected increases that is already provided for graduation requirements. 

The course catalog is a book issued to students beginning in state universities.  It tells them the requirements needed to graduate for each major and minor.  ‘Catalog year’ refers to the catalog issued in the year the student entered as a freshman.  This system is used to prevent new course and major requirement changes from affecting students who are already enrolled, and allows them to plan their course of study at the university.   New graduation requirements are prospective only, and with our new guidelines large tuition increases would be treated the same.

This would help lower the high drop out rate at our state universities since students would not be priced out of school half way through their course of study.  The universities would still have the ability to set tuition for incoming students, just as they set graduation requirements for each new class.  However, parents and students would no longer be subject to huge tuition increases AFTER they have chosen to go to an Arizona university.  The Arizona Board of Regents looked at a proposal similar to this earlier this year, but rejected it as too restrictive for their planning purposes.  I find it amazing that a multi-billion dollar university system is unwilling to plan four years ahead, but a parent putting a child through college is supposed to find the money for unexpected double-digit tuition hikes.

Unfortunately, the Governor demanded that any controls on tuition increases be removed from the budget, and through heavy lobbying by the Governor and the AZ Board of Regents, it was removed in a 2am amendment to the budget.  The Governor does NOT want this proposal on her desk.

Please contact every Senator and Representative (email and phone numbers at www.azleg.state.az.us) and ask them to support HB2260 to reign in out-of-control tuition increases at our public universities. 

After all, your income isn’t rising faster than inflation; why should tuition?  Tell them to stop the universities from exploiting the parents and students in our state universities.  Getting an education is too important.

Regards,

Sen. Dean Martin