So, let’s start with the bad news from yesterday’s Board of Regents meeting, the 3.65% increase in tuition.
First off, if someone where to ask me “what does the phrase ‘throw under the bus’ mean?” I’d say it means not raising tuition enough to cover your obvious operating expenses, and balancing the books that are tilted out of whack by administrative salaries and football by firing a bunch of people you were barely paying a living wage to begin with. The press release says that all the cost savings will be in “administrative positions” and “cost containment.” I call bullshit on that. The way the Board of Regents is going to try to make this work (and btw, I think the BoR made the call on this, not the actual administrators, and I am willing to bet that this was the last straw that caused everyone in the Provost’s office to quit) is by firing secretaries, PTs, janitors, etc. If there is a single honest-to-goodness administrator actually fired/laid off in this deal, I will be shocked.
Second, I have a feeling this 3.65% is temporary: I will bet anyone a dollar that tuition goes up again before the end of the school year. You read it here first.
Third, this strikes me as a stooopid message to send to the state, obviously in the mood to slash and burn budgets wherever it can. By not raising tuition more like six or seven percent– which is what every other university in the state has done– EMU is sending the message “hey, we don’t really need the state funding that bad, thanks.” Everyone who runs a budget– certainly everyone who runs a budget as part of a big entity like a state office, a hospital, a university– knows that you spend the money. Otherwise, you run the risk of having your next year’s budget cut on the grounds that you don’t really need it. Everyone who has ever had anything to do with a department budget at EMU knows exactly what I’m talking about here.
Again, read it here first: I predict in 2012-13, the money that EMU gets from the state will be less than whatever CMU, WMU, etc. get from the state.
Finally, as I have pointed out many MANY times before, no one is coming to EMU because it costs less. If that were the case, enrollment would be up (and it’s not) and we would only be accepting about half or less of the students who apply (like the more pricy U of M or MSU). Sure, students and their families make choices on price when the numbers are significant– going to a community college for gen ed instead of EMU, for example, or going to a public university instead of a private one. But there is no freakin’ way that a student will choose EMU over CMU, WMU, Oakland, or Wayne State based on tuition.
And again, the math doesn’t lie here: 0/0/0% failed in increasing enrollment. Period. If anything, I think this ABC Warehouse/”Prices so low they are insane!” approach to marketing the costs at EMU is a turn-off, making us look cheap.
