Monday marked the beginning of another legislation session where Arizona lawmakers will try to finally tackle the issues that have been chasing our state for years and block new ones altogether. In her State of the State address Monday, Gov. Jan Brewer touched on the past as a lesson learned and expressed a vision of hope for the future.
But, where does the future truly begin? We say it begins with education. Since 2008, Arizona’s public universities have lost a combined $428 million in state funding. In that time, the cost of freshman in-state tuition for students on the Tempe campus of ASU has increased from $5,410 to $9,208. The price of ASU’s in-state tuition saw an 18 percent increase from 2010 to 2011. The cost of higher education is continually on the rise all over the country and not in the metaphorical sense, not in the “that-final-paper-cost-me-my-weekend sense,” but in the “potential-to-cause-financial-ruin-before-graduation sense.”
Students have been forced into taking out loans, ransacking savings accounts or rethinking going to school at all as a result.
Of those that do make it through graduation, as they walk off the commencement stage and through the doors of our job-hungry economy, many are moving back home. We attend college in order to further ourselves as members of a free market society that places a high value on higher education—and we should be able to afford to do so. These lofty dreams shouldn’t include an obligatory “two years living in Mom’s basement” in order to save money or make student loan payments on time.
The governor’s office reports a projected surplus in the state budget for the first time since 2008. The 2010-2011 fiscal year ended with a $300 million surplus that has the potential to rise between $450 million and $650 million.
So where is the money going?
Over the past couple of years, Arizona’s public universities met the state’s demands for cuts in a serious re-appropriation of budgets. It would be nice for the 2011-2012 fiscal year to begin with no more cuts, as well as perhaps a “re-gifting” of state funds. The state should be investing some of the surplus in education.
ASU President Michael Crow showed exemplary cooperation by reducing the budget at ASU by $90 million in the 2010-2011 fiscal year. This wasn’t an easy task. He eliminated 190 custodial jobs in favor of outsourcing these contracts to private, cheaper companies. Faculty is going another year without raises and as previously mentioned, the cost of tuition has risen.
Crow told The State Press in an interview with the Editorial Board on Oct. 11 that University officials plan to keep tuition increases as low as possible with an ultimate goal of no tuition raises at all. “We’ve set a maximum planning target of 3 percent and a desired target of 0 percent,” Crow said.
So with the framework being constructed, Arizona’s future has the potential to rise from the ashes of our past like the namesake of our capitol city. If education thrives and continues to be a beacon of influence to the rest of the nation, we will be reborn an educational Phoenix. However, without the help of the state legislature, the cuts will keep on coming and the universities will have no choice but to react.
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