Tuition should not be raised by Trustees on Thursday
The Central Michigan University Board of Trustees has a gigantic decision to make Thursday.
Tuition increases come nearly every year, but this year has proven to be different for several other public universities in the state of Michigan.
Eastern Michigan University became an overnight sensation when they announced they would not raise tuition for students in the fall. Michigan State University was predicted to raise tuition 4.9 percent but their Board of Trustees instead delivered a 2.5 increase. The University of Michigan increased tuition by 1.5 percent, their lowest raise in 26 years.
All public state funded universities in the state of Michigan are facing a 3.1 percent cut of their state funding, which means CMU will lose $2,584,400, meanwhile EMU would lose $2,451,900.
The university has even refused to give raises to several of its employee unions, all as part of widespread cost saving measures.
Where are all of these savings going that would still require an increased contribution from students’ pockets?
All this begs the question: why should CMU have to raise tuition at all?
Students on the CMU Promise will be entering their fourth year at CMU, so the excuse that the university is only giving a tuition increase to a small percentage of students is no longer valid.
Students who have been here three years or less will get this increase tacked on to what they are paying in the coming months.
Not raising tuition would give CMU an opportunity to promote something special with tuition, which they have not been able to do since the CMU Promise was in place.
This year could be a record breaking year for incoming freshmen and there is the possibility of having so many students on campus that some residence halls could have a fifth roommate.
Obviously there is not a lack of bodies coming to CMU, so if EMU can not raise tuition there is no excuse for CMU to not be able to maintain current tuition.
But the university has constantly talked about the declining number of graduating seniors from high schools and keeping tuition constant would be something easy to use to convince more students to come here.
Fact is, there will most likely be a record number of freshmen coming to CMU this fall, and with them a good amount of incoming tuition -— whether or not that tuition goes up.
