What a surprise.
In a recent State Press story ASU President Michael Crow is quoted as saying, “I think it is very good news that we’ve been able to derive a financial model that greatly limits our tuition increase this year.”
This, ostensibly, refers to the business model he laid out in his video on tuition increases, in which he says in-state students will have a 0 percent increase while out-of-state student and all graduate students will have a tuition increase of 3 percent.
That sounds fair. But it’s worth looking at what this model is.
He lists three areas: new enrollment, ASU online and increasing tuition, and implies all three are different. He does this by listing them as different ways of raising revenue, despite all three being nothing more than one source of revenue — student tuition — broken into three areas.
Tuition is the business model. In the 2007-08 academic year, just five years ago, ASU’s resident tuition was $2,486 per semester for full time in-state students. In 2009-10, just three years ago, it was $3,423 for full time in-state students. And now, for 2011-12, it is $4,860 per semester for in-state full time enrollment. That means that in the past five years tuition has gone up $2,374 — in other words, a 95 percent increase.
Crow claims out-of-state tuition will increase 3 percent, a figure he says is the Higher Education Price Index amount for 2012. The HEPI is a calculated percentage of inflation costs universities should expect to see, similar to how the Consumer Price Index gauges inflation of consumer goods. The HEPI for 2012 is not 3 percent, though. It’s 2.4 percent.
But out-of-state tuition isn’t increasing with the HEPI. Out-of-state tuition is going up 5.2 to 5.8 percent, according to the tuition and fees schedule. That means, then, at $11,160 per semester and with 21,000 out-of-state students, Crow will bring in an additional $7.9 million over inflation costs.
Online students are seeing an increase also. Online tuition is being increased $17 per credit hour, for a 4 percent tuition increase.
The HEPI should be a good source to gauge tuition. Crow makes the implicit claim he’s working hard to limit tuition increases for in-state students. The HEPI for 2011 was 2.3 percent. Mr. Crow didn’t stick to that, though, as tuition from fiscal year 2011-12 increased 20.4 percent. Keeping tuition the same, then, for next year, gives an effective increase of 10 percent per year for two years, which is 7.6 percent more than the cost of inflation.
Crow is not the fighter for student’s interests he makes himself out to be. Rather, he’s a master of rhetoric, releasing reports with titles of “ASU’s campus-based tuition proposal has no increase for in-state undergrads.” Such reports, as his video also does, mask the true story: ASU’s business model is tuition. If he really cared he’d give us a break.
Now that would be a surprise.
Reach the columnist at whamilt@asu.edu
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