 On Point Vincent Carroll, editor of the editorial pages, writes his On Point column most weekdays. He is also an author and freelance writer. Reach Vincent Carroll at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com. |
Carroll: Change the climate
University presidents can turn on a dime when given the chance to polish their social or environmental credentials. But ask them to curb the galloping cost of higher education, and you’d think they’d been told to defy the laws of physics.
Boosting productivity can be such a contentious process. How much more exciting to trot off into other initiatives, such as the “Presidents Climate Commitment” that promises to transform their campuses into “climate neutral” oases.
This green commitment was crafted just six months ago, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education, but it is already garnering “10 to 15 signatures a week.”
At a recent ceremony, the Chronicle recounts, “70 college presidents and chancellors signed the Presidents Climate Commitment, joining 284 presidents, representing institutions with a total enrollment of 2 million students in 45 states.”
Once these institutions sign on, they’ll have one year to complete an inventory of all greenhouse gas emissions on campus and two years to finish an “action plan” for reducing or offsetting them.
The campaign’s “Leadership Circle” even includes four Coloradans: Chancellor Bud Peterson of the University of Colorado at Boulder, Chancellor Pamela Shockley-Zalabak of CU-Colorado Springs, Chancellor M. Roy Wilson of CU’s Denver campuses, and President Stephen Jordan of Metro State.
If higher ed has this much time and resources to invest in holding the line on greenhouse emissions, maybe it’s time for a similar effort concerning tuition. After all, “even when adjusted for inflation, tuition and fees have risen 24 percent at four-year public universities, 11 percent at private four-year colleges, and 17 percent at public two-year institutions over the past five years . . . .” notes a recent report called Making Opportunity Affordable, funded by the Lumina Foundation for Education. “Meanwhile, the amount of money that colleges and universities spend to provide education to their students also is rising faster than consumer prices and health-care costs.”
Turbocharged higher-ed inflation has been the norm, as it happens, for many years, not just the past five.
So how about a national campaign among university presidents to create “tuition neutral” campuses — defined as places where the cost for students will rise no faster than the consumer price index?
If college honchos can save the planet, surely they can spare a little solicitude for the American middle class.
Dropping the other shoe
University of Colorado students are clearly not going to see tuition-neutral campuses any time soon, given the details of a resolution that the regents will consider Thursday.
The resolution eases into the subject of tuition by noting, among other things, the relatively low level of “support per student” that the university receives; it predicts that “40 percent of the resident undergraduate student population at the University of Colorado at Boulder will pay no more than a 5 percent increase in tuition”; and it talks about the importance of “competitive compensation packages” for faculty.
Eventually, of course, the resolution does get down to business: “The largest segment of the resident undergraduate student population [at CU-Boulder] shall experience a 14.6 percent increase in tuition costs.”
In case you’re wondering, that figure is more than four times last year’s inflation rate for the Denver, Boulder and Greeley region.
But at least the quest for climate neutrality is coming along nicely!
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.
When I was a a student at CU in 1970, a semester's tuition was $301 and a gallon of gas was 31.9 cents. Now both have gone up by an average of about 6 1/4% per year. Of course, the $301 included medical care with no co-insurance or copay.
Posted by Yaakov Watkins on June 27, 2007 07:40 AM