With the recent release of the legislators’ version of the 2001-2003 state budget, higher education gained some breathing room, but students still need to be concerned about an inevitable tuition increase.
While representatives and senators wrangle over state and federal funding to fill the holes in the state’s budget, students would still be left dealing with what could be an almost 9 percent increase in tuition.
State Sen. Lenn Hannon (R – Ashland) and Rep. Ben Westlund (R – Bend), co-chairmen of the Joint Ways and Means Committee, released a state budget proposal that places nearly $30 million more toward higher education.
The Governor’s budget proposal called for nearly $100 million less than what the Oregon University System requested. While the legislative plan offers just a little more funding, it is viewed by many as a positive step.
“It was good news,” said Oregon University System Chancellor Joseph Cox. He said he was happy with the state’s Republicans, who are apparently committed to retaining higher education funding, but he admitted that the final budget plan won’t be complete until the spring.
“There’s a long way to go,” he said. “It’s neither perfect nor finished.”
But Cox said he was a born optimist, and would continue to believe the state would come to support higher education.
John Wykoff, the legislative director for the Oregon Student Association, said students in Oregon need to be aware that despite encouraging news from the legislature, a tuition hike is likely and students will “be paying more to get less.”
Under the OUS’s original plan, he said higher education would mandate a tuition increase that would be directed only for higher education. In the proposed budgets by Gov. John Kitzhaber and the co-chairmen, Wykoff said students would still be paying more, but getting less services.
He said both the budget proposals include a tuition hike, but only for the purpose of filling holes in other areas of the state budget. Wykoff supported an idea of a tuition increase, but only for improving higher education. The current plans, he said, only used students’ money as a cash cow for floating other state programs.
“Are students going to be paying to be subsidizing another state budget?” he asked, in regard to the current budget proposals.
Tim Young, a student representative on the State Board of Higher Education, said he has been consistently displeased with the budget process. He said the state needs to commit resources to higher education, or it will face losing its best and brightest to other states. While Young did not specifically criticize the budget decisions, he did say there needs to be a greater emphasis on funding the OUS.
“If the state doesn’t give enough resources, the whole system will collapse,” he said.
Budget plans boost tuition
Daily Emerald
February 4, 2001
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