Opinion

Tuition increases symptom of a major problem

Students at the University of Connecticut face yet another round of tuition increases. During a Dec. 11 meeting, UConn’s trustees unanimously approved a plan to increase tuition by 23% over the next five years. It is intended “to protect the university’s academic quality and to make sure that our students get the courses they need to graduate on time in the face of increasing cost pressure,” said Scott Jordan, UConn’s chief financial officer.

The UConn tuition saga is yet another example of how the everyday people of Connecticut pay for state government’s slavish devotion to the interests of public employees.

For Connecticut residents who attend UConn, annual tuition now is $13,798. Under the newly approved tuition plan, this figure will increase to $14,406 at the start of the 2020-21 academic year and will hit $17,012 when the 2024-25 school year gets underway, the Connecticut Mirror reported Dec. 11. (Out-of-state tuition will increase from $36,466 to $39,680 over the same period.) These figures do not include room-and-board and other fees.

A Dec. 11 Hearst Connecticut Media story indicated the tuition increases were driven in large part by declining state-government support for UConn and by increasing costs at the university, especially those related to fringe benefits. “The cost of fringe benefits has increased from $158.2 million in 2011 to $337 million in 2020, and the share paid by UConn has grown from 39% to 50% in that time,” reporter Liz Teitz noted. This news should surprise no one.

Anyone even remotely familiar with Connecticut knows the state ran into fiscal trouble because generations of politicians failed to properly fund retirement benefits granted to public employees. In late November, the Hartford-based Yankee Institute for Public Policy reported that each year, Connecticut government spends $3.7 billion to deal with unfunded liabilities. For reference, the annual state budget is approximately $21 billion. The situation is further complicated by the legislature’s and former Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s 2017 pact with the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition, which effectively has spared most unionized state employees from pain. In this environment, it was inevitable that UConn students and their families would take a hit.

Indeed, last March, the Mirror reported, “About $25.5 million in funds paid by students — tuition, room and board — goes toward paying fringe benefits, with about half of that going toward the unfunded pension liability.” At that time, Rep. Gregg Haddad, D-Mansfield, noted in-state UConn students and their families already are paying for the unfunded liabilities in the form of higher taxes. Rep. Haddad is House chairman of the legislature’s Higher Education and Employment Advancement Committee.

More than anyone else, UConn students and their families epitomize that someone has to pay for the largess for the public workforce. University officials are quick to note that the new round of tuition increases is not as steep as others approved in recent years. Fair enough, but the fact remains that increases may not have been necessary had Connecticut’s “leaders” governed properly.

This editorial first appeared in the Republican American on Dec. 12.

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