After President David Boren’s recent announcement of next year’s tuition and fees, I shared in the disappointment of many over the 3 percent increase.
However, it seems I am nearly alone in the student body in having hoped the increase would be several times higher.
No, this is neither satire nor a column I was forced to write to promote the balance of opinions. It is my honest hope that Boren and the administration will raise tuition more aggressively in the future.
How could I possibly wish for my Bursar’s bill to be several thousand dollars higher and drive me into the student loan offices?
I would welcome this short-term pain because the long-run benefits of a massive tuition hike would far outweigh the immediate financial burdens.
During Boren’s tenure, OU has taken many steps to attract national attention and increase the value of our degrees. Boren has used his political reputation to attract internationally recognized figures, such as Leon Panetta and Zbigniew Brzezinski last month.
OU also has recently attracted a number of high-profile professors with impressive curriculum vitae. Finally, we are all familiar with Boren’s tireless campaign to attract National Merit Scholars, and it’s impossible not to notice the improvements in campus facilities.
The final shackle preventing OU from competing with the truly elite public universities, such as the University of California campuses at Berkeley and Los Angeles, Virginia, Michigan and North Carolina, is our low tuition.
According to U.S. News and World Report, these are the top-five public universities in America, listed in order. Not one of these universities offers low tuition.
Of these five universities, the lowest combination of tuition and fees is to be had by a North Carolina resident at fifth-ranked UNC, who will pay $15,800 before room, board and other expenses. This is more than twice the paltry $7,423 a native Oklahoman will pay at OU next academic year.
Students facing the most expensive tuition in this elite group are non-Californians attending UC-Berkeley, who will pay $44,500, compared to $17,400 for a non-Oklahoman at OU. Indeed, even native Californians at Berkeley or UCLA will pay much more than non-resident OU students such as myself, at more than $21,000.
It would surely be foolish for OU to raise tuition to $21,000 for residents and $44,500 for non-residents. Frankly, an OU degree probably isn’t worth nearly that much to most of us.
However, tuition increases of a few thousand dollars each year over the next decade would allow the university to accelerate its growth and bejewel its reputation.
With much higher tuition, OU would be able to poach professors from more prestigious institutions and expand its existing resources and facilities. The job market value of the OU degree would skyrocket accordingly, making tuition of $15,000 or more per year a smart investment for motivated students of high potential.
It is obvious this strategy would render OU too expensive for some current and prospective students. The improvements in OU’s reputation would also drive out mediocre prospective students who would face greater competition for admission.
Despite this, there would still be plenty of options for those students who could not keep up with the rise of the university.
For the top students who attend or want to attend OU but can’t afford higher tuition, there will always be scholarships. Student loans would be attractive to students who intend to work hard and learn much, as they would land higher-paying jobs upon graduation from a more prestigious OU.
Such students can also spend time at a less expensive university or community college, improve their academic records and earn scholarships or take out loans to transfer here.
Less-exceptional students who aren’t willing to sacrifice for a more rigorous education should not be welcomed to drag down OU’s reputation and average test scores. Instead, these students should find a less-expensive and slower-growing university, of which there are plenty around Oklahoma and the country.
OU students should realize higher tuition, though painful right now, will allow the university to grow in quality and reputation, and therefore will greatly increase the value of their degree upon graduation.
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TheJeff 2 years, 1 month ago
Is there any possibility of looking at the expenditure site of the sheet? I know a giant screen TV is a drop in the bucket of the OU budget, but lots of them, and lots of other crap like that adds up. How much useless junk do we buy. Screw a "bejeweled reputation" or every amenity under the sun. Let's focus on offering an affordable, quality education for the Oklahoman people. (As a side note, high school should provide a lot more of what is now "college" material and save a lot of people a lot of money). That's not saying I want to become a low key community college atmosphere, but there's waste and excess that can be considered before tuition hikes for the sake of it.
rosa 2 years, 1 month ago
The fact that the author of this column is wearing a circle-A sweatshirt makes me die a little inside.
JJanowiak 2 years, 1 month ago
I love all your columns where you write from the perspective of a character in Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash"! It would be nice if you had one single teensy shred of evidence to actually back up your purely theoretical claims about the relationship between tuition costs and the quality of a university. Educational quality at UC-Berkeley has gone down precisely because of government divestment in the UC system causing rising tuition costs, and furthermore, tons of students there receive Pell Grants and other forms of government assistance to make education affordable for them. But I guess you wouldn't like that very much since that A on your hoodie means that you think all government is evil compared to the holy market (speaking of which, you must also not like government regulation of the corrupt student loan market although with your orthodoxy you probably don't think there were problems in the first place). From a premise like that all I can think is that your logic is very, very pretty and is entirely separated from reality. Read without previous knowledge of all the nutty stuff you've said before, this column sounds relatively more reasonable, but I think in combination with your other views it is a surefire way to completely destroy the educational system in tandem with your ideological mad march to raze the foundations of the modern world in the pursuit of this anarcho-capitalist utopia that exists primarily on the internet.
William 2 years, 1 month ago
Whoa whoa whoa wait a minute.
I'm sorry, I don't want to be another commenter that brings your anarchist pride (it seems you can't escape it) into context...but I just have to highlight the hilarious hypocrisy of your ideals. You want to strengthen the (and I quote) "elite" quality of our educational STATE INSTITUTION?!?!?! You want the people to sacrifice their resources for the (even by arguably illegitimate causation) betterment of a University and its image?!?!?! Oh dear. It's just all so backwards.
oustudent2013 2 years, 1 month ago
"Less-exceptional students who aren’t willing to sacrifice for a more rigorous education should not be welcomed to drag down OU’s reputation and average test scores"
Does "less-exceptional" mean "poor?" If you want a better reputaion, then raise the academic standards to get in, not the financial standards.
ohyou9033 2 years, 1 month ago
I'm just curious, if an "OU degree probably isn’t worth nearly that much," why didn't YOU take your business (i.e. your tuition, room and board money) elsewhere?
Are you implying that "motivated students of high potential" can only be given the title if they are financially endowed? Because raising tuition $15,000 a semester is completely infeasible for much of the "motivated" student population. Scholarships, loans, grants, and work-study programs, among others, can only get you so far and such certainly cannot cover all superfluous costs. And, by the way, not everybody gets all of that.
I'm also curious as to how you're paying for college right now. Have you taken on the burden by yourself? College fund? Parents sending you money each month? Because your views on the value of money and how HARD it is to come by seem extremely premature. How much money would YOU have invested in your personal plan and how much debt are YOU willing to accumulate with loans and interest to attain that 'worthy' diploma you praise?