Cue Bryan Adams' "Everything I Earn (I Earn for ASU)."
The latest monetary controversy to rock the Sherwood Forest of Tempe is yet another funding cut from the Legislature of Nottingham.
It's too bad that Robin Hood, played by ASU, and his band of Merry Men, Friar Tuck (UA) and Little John (NAU), have to duel with the Nottingham crew every time the budget gets tight.
Inevitably cuts happen, and Robin Hood and the Merry Men must steal from the apparently rich to give to the poor.
A recent bill from the Legislature is especially appropriate for Robin Hood. It cuts funding for students with more than 155 credit hours (see story, "Some undergraduates to pay graduate tuition").
The bill left the Prince of Thieves with no choice.
Scared of losing both large amounts of money and embattled low-income students, ASU has had no choice but to raise tuition of the credit-hour-endowed students to the level of graduate tuition.
It took the protests of a few post-baccalaureate students -- students with undergraduate degrees who are attending ASU to get more undergraduate degrees -- to postpone this motion from fall 2005 to fall 2006.
You can't use laws to classify all students as rich or poor, or ignore the effects that a sharp tuition increase could have on students who hadn't (but probably should have) expected it.
We understand that singling out students with more than 155 credit hours saves the majority from having to pay even higher tuition rates. But we've been watching tuition rise to the top of the magical bottom-third-in-the-nation threshold for the past few years.
We can deal with that -- just barely. But this bill is a creative way to save state money while sidestepping tuition limits imposed by the bottom-third mandate. It's also a sign of the state's desperation.
We at The State Press urge the sheriff and his posse in Nottingham to address the critical issues facing the state budget, including perpetual need for increased spending without a corresponding increase in incoming cash.
ASU students inevitably will have to pay more money, but we ask the Legislature to be kind to students for its own sake.
Robin Hood and his Merry Men are good for economic development when they're doing what they're supposed to be doing: educating citizens so they can afford to pay more tax money to Nottingham's poor little budget.
If Robin Hood hopes to court Maid Marian, the myth of the New American University, he needs better support.
ASU President Michael Crow had better think twice about continuing his repeated pleas to fund past enrollment growth when the government won't even fund members of the current undergraduate student population.
We can only see more students getting lost in the middle-class shuffle.
A final thought for those who make the laws:
You'll get away with this latest cut, and the next few after that. But you'll lose big in the long run.
