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Printer-Friendly ModeTuition increase likely in face of budget deficit
June 25, 2007 —
As June comes to a close, SVSU is still struggling to finalize a budget for the 2007-2008 fiscal year. This is largely because of the state legislature's inability to resolve a looming budget deficit for the fiscal year of 2008.
The deficit for the state's 2007 fiscal year was resolved by a series of cuts and delayed payments, of which SVSU experienced firsthand. The cuts were passed only after intense partisan bickering and a realization of deep philosophical differences between house and senate Republicans and Democrats.
Most Republicans in the legislature are profoundly opposed to raising taxes, and argue that to balance the budget, the size and scope of the state government need to be reduced. And while Democrats are not unanimously in favor of raising taxes, many see deeper cuts as too destructive. Instead they favor some kind of revenue enhancement in order to resolve the state's budget woes. And while it's not quite that simple, the lines are essentially drawn between these two views, which must be resolved in the state's 2008 fiscal year.
This is a problem for SVSU and for SVSU students in particular. If the administration is forced to pass a patchwork, uncertain, "conditional" budget because lawmakers in Lansing can't agree on how to fund the state's public institutions or even run the government, the cost of uncertainty might be reflected in a hefty tuition increase.
If we're lucky, the state will fund the entirety of the University's scheduled appropriation, and we'll all be issued tuition refund checks sometime next semester. However, given the seriousness of the situation, that seems unlikely. Unless Lansing can rapidly get its fiscal house in order, students should expect a sizable increase in the cost of attendance; perhaps the biggest they've ever seen.
And while a rate increase is always hard to take, SVSU has few options. The University has historically opposed cutting anything out of its budget, perhaps a personality trait acquired with years of exponential growth. And the alternatives to a rate increase - cutting staff, departmental budgets, and services - are no more appealing. So the obvious question looms: how much?
No one knows yet - probably not even the administration. But accounting for inflation, the delay of $2.6 million in state appropriations payments (money which may disappear completely), and the immediate evaporation of around $800,000 in state funding from the University's budget, a 10 percent increase in tuition may be a conservative estimate, according to a source within the administration. Recall that last year, tuition increased around 5 percent, when the situation in Lansing was much less worrisome. A 10 percent hike would put tuition at about $203 per credit hour for resident undergraduates.
At this point, only thing this is really certain: it's going to cost more than ever before to go to SVSU. Or for that matter, any of Michigan's public universities. But it is important to understand that it's ultimately up to our elected lawmakers and therefore us to stymie that unfortunate trend. If education is the key to Michigan's economic future, it should be affordable. As students, this is our problem, and we need to be part of its solution.