After Oregon’s Legislature mucked around for months with “shortfalls” in what was surely one of the sorriest examples of fiscal prudence in the state’s history, and as most of the student population rolls back into town — the Board sees this week as an apt time for a discussion about economics and conservation.
According to a Cato Institute brief published this year, the Legislature hiked per capita spending by 45 percent between 1990 and 2001 — the fourth largest such increase in the nation.
But now, thanks largely to economic problems, the state’s revenue has shrunk, and citizens — the University community certainly included — are feeling the pinch: The long-overdue budget allocated 10.8 percent less money for higher education than the last biennium, and recent legislation geared to relaxing the financial crunch by restructuring the Public Employee Retirement System prompted at least a few University professors to retire early.
But what do the state’s fiscal (mis)adventures have to do with buying laundry hampers and microchenille throws for the just-occupied dorm room or apartment or upgrading your utilitarian Nokia 3390 cell phone to the high-end Samsung SGH-V205? Well, there are at least a couple of lessons here.
The new school year offers a wealth of new opportunities — especially for freshmen — from the academic to the social to the financial. But, as students run out to Fred Meyer or Target to pick up floor mats and filing cabinets, they should practice some fiscal prudence of their own, and for good reason, too.
For the first time, typical resident University students are paying more than $5,000 in tuition and fees. That figure means those students are paying an unprecedented 62 percent of their tuition, according to the Oregon Students Association. And tuition costs are set to increase significantly during the next few years.
But ballooning tuition is by no means the only monetary bear that students wrestle with: By 2002, the average student owes $16,928 of college loan debt after graduation — double the figure from eight years earlier — according to a CNN/Money report. And by 2000, nearly one in ten students had racked up more than $7,000 in credit card debt, according to the National Foundation for Credit Counseling.
Of course, all of this doesn’t mean that students shouldn’t spend anything on improving their living spaces’ ergonomics: Some consumerism is healthy, even necessary; wild excess is not. The Organize-It Wire Storage 6-Cube Unit ($19.99) will help an incoming freshman make the most of a shared (and therefore cramped) 9-foot-10-by-15-foot-4.5 Walton Complex residence hall room. But if you’re looking for playing with lighting, a brushed chrome lava lamp ($64.95) is probably neither the most functional nor the most economical choice. And the Legislature left Oregonians with a painful reminder about the results of a lack of foresight.
Another more subtle — but probably more important — piece of the puzzle connects microeconomic concerns with resource management: conservation. Too often, the appeal of the newer, the faster and the shinier persuades consumers to discard a perfectly sufficient cell phone or backpack or sunglasses. If an incoming freshman only uses their computer for word processing, Internet access and music, there’s probably little reason for them to shove their old computer in the closet and have the ‘rents buy them a 3-gigahertz Pentium 4 system.
The point of all this, of course, is that the freedom of college brings all kinds of budgetary opportunities — and responsibilities. And the Legislature’s poor planning this year can teach the state’s collegiate a valuable lesson: Spend wisely.
Who says Oregon’s politicians didn’t do anything for college students this year?