To freeze or not to freeze? Universities consider capping tuition prices
Sounds like a case of academic Freaky Friday: College students push for higher tuition prices, while lawmakers attempt to reverse the trend of rising college costs.
But it’s no movie plot in Wisconsin. Last week, the University of Wisconsin-Stout’s Student Association unanimously passed a resolution calling for a 2% increase in tuition prices. The student government’s support for the slight hike comes after Gov. Scott Walker urged the Legislature to freeze tuition at all public universities in the Badger State.
“On the surface, a tuition freeze can sound like a good thing,” said Juliana Lucchesi, a senior at UW-Stout and president of the Student Association. “But when we started looking at the numbers, we realized what we could lose if it goes into effect.”
And it’s not just Wisconsin. Across the country, legislators from both sides of the aisle are considering tuition freezes. The concept is simple: Hold a public college’s tuition steady over a given number of years, usually two or four. In other words, state lawmakers impose a 0% increase on tuition sticker prices, forcing institutions and sometimes the legislatures to reconsider their budgets for higher education.
Reactions by states to tuition freezes have varied. On April 3, a group of students from the University of Iowa headed to the state Capitol building in Des Moines, pushing legislators to impose a tuition freeze.
“Our priority is to keep tuition affordable,” said Katherine Valde, a junior at the University of Iowa, who led the UI lobbying effort.
Like other public universities, the University of Iowa has dealt with decreasing state funding for the college, with a 25.3% drop in state support since 2006. In order to keep the school competitive, Valde says, the financial burden has shifted from state to student, as tuition prices increase to make up for lost funding.
Melanie Kruvelis is a Spring 2013 Paste BN Collegiate Correspondent. Learn more about her here.
This story originally appeared on the Paste BN College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.