Solutions Through Higher Education

Soaring tuition making college plans tougher

Arizona Daily Star
Feb. 2, 2010

SEATTLE - As students around the country anxiously wait for college acceptance letters, their parents are sweating the looming tuition bills at public universities.

Florida college students could face yearly 15 percent tuition increases for years, and University of Illinois students will pay at least 9 percent more. The University of Washington will charge 14 percent more at its flagship campus. And in California, tuition increases of more than 30 percent have sparked protests reminiscent of the 1960s.

Tuition has been trending upward for years, but debate in statehouses and trustee meeting rooms has been more urgent this year as most states struggle their way out of the economic meltdown.

The College Board says families are paying about $172 to $1,096 more in tuition and fees this school year. The national average for 2009-2010 is about $7,020, not including room and board, according to the nonprofit association of colleges that oversees the SATs and Advanced Placement tests.

Arizona students pay slightly below the average - $6,855 in tuition and required fees this year, up 24 percent from the 2008-09 school year.

Mike Sarb, a University of Illinois senior from the Chicago suburb of Elk Grove Village, Ill., says money is a big concern for his blue-collar family scrambling to find the money to pay more than $20,000 for tuition, room and board.

They are not pleased that university officials are likely to raise tuition 9 percent this summer.

"They do complain that the school's taking advantage of people" by raising tuition, Sarb said.

But interim President Stanley Ikenberry says the school has run out of options. With a budget deficit expected to top $11 billion this year, the state of Illinois owes the university more than $430 million, money he doesn't expect to see any time soon.

In some cases, one student's tuition disaster is another's bargain.

State officials have told Florida students they can expect 15 percent tuition increases every year until tuition reaches the national average. That could be a long slog, as the state is starting its tuition realignment from a place other students envy - about $3,000 a year.

In California, unprecedented budget cuts to higher education have led to huge fee increases at the state's two public university systems, as well as layoffs, furloughs, enrollment cuts and reduced course offerings.

At the University of California, which has 10 campuses and about 220,000 students, in-state undergraduate fees in fall 2010 are set to reach $10,302 - 32 percent more than in fall 2009 and three times what California residents paid 10 years ago.

But at California State University, the nation's largest public university system with 23 campuses and 450,000 students, resident undergraduate fees rose 32 percent from fall 2008 to fall 2009 to $4,026, which is nearly three times what students paid 10 years ago.

So far a few states, Oklahoma and Missouri among them, have avoided tuition increases entirely. And the Oklahoma Legislature gave its state universities no reason to complain when it fulfilled the state higher-education budget request.