Out-of-state student 'feels expendable'

Editor:

I am writing this letter to the Wildcat in hopes that maybe someone can answer a few questions for me. Recently I attended the hearing on the possible tuition increase on April 11. At this meeting I expected to see many students angry and upset about the possibility of tuition being raised. There were a few but for the most part students asked the regents to raise tuition as little as possible due to the lack of budget resources.

I understand that the Arizona Constitution states that the state should provide an education to the residents of Arizona at the least possible cost. Since the State Legislature decided not to increase funding to the state universities, the decision was placed upon the shoulders of the regents on how to budget resources.

The regents can compare the increases to the national average and claim that Arizona's schools are in the top one-third of public universities in terms of cost, but these figures are worthless for out-of-state students who will not be able to afford this geography tax.

Now the burden is placed "on the shoulders of the most expendable"Ä the out-of-state student. Would Regent John Munger explain to me how the proposal of a task force study to identify and eliminate the very problems he claimed would keep him from justifying a tuition increase? Is this everything that the Regents could have done to eliminate inefficiencies at the state universities?

Apparently, the Regents thought that it was such a good idea that they rejected this fine proposal.

Perhaps some of the scores of administrators and bureaucrats here at the U of A would voluntarily take pay cuts and lower themselves into the income tax brackets with only four zeros. Perhaps President Manuel T. Pacheco and Provost Paul Sypherd feel that the universities' mission to provide the best possible education is important enough to supersede their own financial well-being and will donate large portions of their salaries to the Non-Resident Set Aside Grant Fund. I bet those contributions are wholly tax deductible, fellas.

I apologize Ä I seem to have forgotten that as an out-of-state student, I'm expendable.

We all know that since this will never happen and the only jobs that are likely to be cut will be teaching positions, many students will no longer be able to carry the burden of the system's inefficiencies.

As more out-of-state students leave due to financial woes, this burden will be placed on fewer expendable backs, that is unless the university can con more parents and students into paying to attend Vacuum University.

Sooner or later, when Arizona has more prisons than saguaros that burden will be placed on the backs of its very own college-bound residents. I am not belittling the quality of the education that I have received here, but I am wondering whether or not the university and its leaders will ever do anything to eliminate the multitude of inefficiencies like themselves.

Expendable yours,

Seth McCloud Dalton

Anthropology Senior

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