Two weeks ago, The State Press ran an article about impending tuition hikes at ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law.
The school plans to wean itself completely off public funding and compensate by dramatically raising tuition.
It wasn’t a new story — the University has been talking about privatization since early last semester. But the story got people talking.
And some of that talk was fairly critical. Unsurprisingly, many ASU law students are unhappy with the plan. It involves tuition increases of up to ten percent a year, along with increases in class size. Current students won’t be grandfathered in, so this August their tuition will start going up.
Student leaders like first-year law student Ed Hermes raised the obvious questions. Why the element of surprise? How does this serve the state of Arizona? And of course, to quote Hermes, isn’t privatization a “long-term fix to a short-term problem” of reduced state funding?
Just to prove he’s not completely oblivious, the law school’s Dean Paul Schiff Berman wrote to reassure his worried students. With a Facebook post.
For those who don’t regularly check the ASU Law Facebook wall, it’s essentially a very long list of announcements. Considering the coverage this issue has gotten in The State Press, The Arizona Republic, and a number of popular blogs, this seems an odd place to bury his response. Both major papers publish letters to the editor — especially letters related to recent articles.
But the dean did write something, so nobody can say he didn’t try. And if you missed his post, don’t worry — it added little to the conversation.
“I have read that there are plans to increase our tuition by $10,000-$15,000 over the next year or two,” Berman wrote, but “the College of Law differential tuition increase for next year is $1,500, a far cry from those numbers.”
As evasion, this post is a masterpiece — you see, nothing in that quote is technically untrue, although it’s certainly misleading.
Next year, law tuition will be going up $2,700, but $1,200 of that also applies to other graduate programs. So Berman left it out.
As to the overall increase, University officials told The Republic that the school would be raising tuition by up to 10 percent a year for the first five years. This year, in-state tuition is $21,598. Do the math, and you’ll get $34,783, a $13,185 increase. But that increase will occur over five years, not one or two. He doesn’t say where he read that “year or two” thing, but it certainly helps him dodge the issue.
Sure, maybe Berman just worded things unclearly. Perhaps tuition isn’t really rising “$10,000-$15,000.” But if that’s the case, he could easily have provided the correct number. The school knows it’s giving up $7.5 million in annual state funding, so the necessary tuition increase should be a matter of simple division.
If he wants to reassure his students, Berman could go a long way just by giving them the numbers. And he could do the most good by publishing those figures in something students actually read. Like a newspaper covering the increases.
John is a law student. Reach him at john.a.gaylord@asu.edu
