We all know that higher education is in a transition process at best — a financial crisis at worst — but have we ever stopped to wonder who’s to blame?
The argument for many college students comes down to just two participants — the state or the university. Those are the two principle players that affect how much students and/or their parents are paying each year for higher education.
The university touts many of the same arguments. We’re a deal, UT Board of Trustees members say. You have the HOPE Scholarship; why do you complain?
All the while, the university becomes less and less of a deal as tuition is raised each year. The HOPE Scholarship, in the same way, makes less and less of a difference as the scholarship gets older and the mid-2000s tuition price, when it was first implemented, becomes more and more distant in the rearview mirror.
Students today who look back at the figure that UT students paid back in 2000 would be shocked. (That figure, again, is less than half the tuition price of what students pay in 2010.)
But ultimately it’s said that the university has to keep raising tuition in order to maintain the level of higher education that we have grown accustomed to.
But that’s not really true, is it? That’s just one way of looking at it. For, as Megan Boehnke puts it in a Knoxville News Sentinel article published July 17, it’s not the cost of educating students that’s went up, it’s state appropriations that have went down.
And now we get to the other side of the argument: the state. It’s the kind of talk that makes Gov. Phil Bredesen verbally throw up his hands at the Board of Trustees meeting back in June and essentially say, stop including those paragraphs at the end of UT press releases talking about reductions in state appropriations for higher education. Bredesen’s advice: Get past it. Move on. Come up with different solutions.
But it’s easy to see why lack of state appropriations would be advertised in the midst of the university moving more toward privatizing its funding and getting the word out that money is vital for higher education. Who would not frame the discussion first with that? It would be foolish not to.
Chancellor Jimmy Cheek and UT administration, ultimately, are doing what they have to do in a tough time. Therefore, it’s a shame that when nine-percent tuition increases are doled out, the immediate blame is put on UT administration and the UT Board of Trustees. It’s a blind, ill-informed reaction, when in reality, a combination of economic realities and the state’s apparent lack of emphasis on higher education — at least in comparison to other states with top state schools in the nation — is to blame.
At the same time — and I know I said this before, but it cannot be said enough — the UT Board of Trustees simply cannot continue to think that the HOPE Scholarship automatically makes any increases they make since its implementation insignificant.
This may sound melodramatic and idealistic, but when thinking of raising higher education, it’s important to think of the college student who is barely able to afford it, the one who will graduate with thousands of dollars owed in student loans. This is the person who has to juggle a part-time job and schoolwork in order to pay for rent, pay for all those fees, pay for books and — oh, yeah — pass classes.
According to the News Sentinel article, higher-education costs are going up faster than inflation. Higher education is not going up at the same rate as everything else in the economy; therefore, it’s not like the price for groceries or the pay scale at the part-time job are recaliberated to help ease the financial burden.
From the News Sentinel article, Terry Hartle, vice president of government and public affairs at the American Council on Education, put it simply: Prospective students do not go to different colleges based on how much they cost. They decide to go because it’s affordable, or they do not go because it’s not affordable.
Do you think that the state truly thinks about this when considering how much college students and their parents — the paying customers — fork out for education each year? Do you think university decisionmakers think in those terms? To be honest, I question it.
That leaves only one more question: Is UT affordable? Will it remain affordable?
For the sake of the future of the state, I hope so.

— Robby O’Daniel is a graduate student in communication and information. He can be reached at rodaniel@utk.edu.