Regents make bad call

Thanks to the Arizona Board of Regents, you can add tuition increases to that list.

The board of regents decided yesterday to increase tuition by $100 (5 percent) for in-state students and $400 (4.6 percent) for out-of-staters. This continues a five-year trend of tuition hikes that average 5 percent across the board.

The state Legislature has yet to pass next year's budget for the three state universities, but the board of regents decided to gamble on the legislative appropriation and make students pay for a funding gap they predict will hit the state's higher education system.

Apart from being inconsiderate of student budgets, this tuition setting process wouldn't be so unusual, except that it was the exact situation the board of regents hoped to avoid by delaying their decision. The board of regents was supposed to vote on tuition increases during their regularly scheduled April 1 meeting, but deferred their decision until this week. The premise behind the decision was that the Legislature would untangle its public school financing mess and allot money for higher education.

That decision made sense, but the board of regents backed out of that commitment in setting tuition yesterday.

The regents said they wanted to set tuition before finals so students can determine whether or not they can return in the fall. Thanks, but we'd rather not balance the university's budget with our tuition dollars. We'd also rather not see the board of regents give the Legislature the go-ahead to limit university funding at will.

The board of regents should have stuck with the original pledge to wait for word from the state Legislature before deciding what students needed to pay. Instead, the board simply put off the decision, made students wait unnecessarily, then set tuition anyway. If they were going to do that, they may as well have done it earlier this month and given students an extra few weeks to set up summer work plans.

After all, students will need those overtime hours now.

The board of regents decided to set tuition yesterday without mention of the adamant arguments against setting it now. It seems the board of regents had decided to set tuition before they even began the meeting.

They also decried the entire process of tuition setting after they were finished, saying it was a "political" procedure. No efforts were made to change the policy, but it is evident from the board of regent's animosity that a modification is long overdue.

We'll be waiting for a new proposal, regents. Until then, students will be left to handle one of life's certainties and fork over the cash.