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Thank you for your post. With limited space in the paper and tight deadlines, some voices are often left out. The voice of GPSA is an important one at ASU and should not be overlooked. Thank you for your statement.

GPSA is the graduate student government at Arizona State University and represents nearly 14,000 graduate and professional students.

Last week, the GPSA Assembly voted to support the tuition policy that was presented to the students by the ASU administration. The vote was divisive and I believe that this demonstrates the complexity of tuition and fees at Arizona State University, especially for graduate students.

Students have been put in an impossible position with fees and tuition. The students at Arizona State University have begrudgingly accepted tuition and fee increases in an effort to ensure a quality product. At the same time, the state of Arizona has regularly sent a message to the student population – that they do not care about quality in an effort to be more “cost effective.”

That being said, the most important issue for graduate students is to ensure that a graduate degree at ASU remains a high quality degree. However, given the increasing costs associated with earning a graduate education, many individuals have made a decision to not pursue one. For instance, total graduate enrollment at ASU increased about 5% from Fall 2006 to Fall 2007 and again about 5% from Fall 2007 to Fall 2008. However, that increase was less than ½ of 1% from Fall 2008 to Fall 2009 with the university’s graduate enrollment only increasing by 3 total students from Fall 08 to Fall 09. While I am not entirely certain if cost is correlated with graduate enrollment, I would suspect it is.

To maintain a high quality degree, GPSA advocates for the following things:

o Ensure that there are adequate financial aid programs available to graduate students on the basis of both need and merit.

o Ensure that TA and RA benefits are improved for all Graduate Students.

o Ensure that undergraduate students are informed of the benefits of pursuing a graduate education

o We oppose increases in program fees that do not have student input in the decision making process.

o We hope that the ASU administration seeks graduate student input prior to any future program or department changes.

o And finally, we want to ensure that program fees, tuition and surcharge increases are not cost-prohibitive for students who want to pursue a graduate education.

The future of the state of Arizona is in the quality of the educational product produced by the State’s higher learning institutions. This goes for both graduate and undergraduate education. My hope is that the Graduate & Professional Student Association of ASU can work closely with the Regents and continue to work closely with the ASU administration to ensure that quality is maintained and costs associated with earning a degree are feasible for students.