This year, students who pay close attention to their bursar statement will notice a modest increase in the cost of their higher education. That’s because over the summer, the OU Board of Regents approved a 4.5 percent increase in tuition and fees.

Now, while no increase is ever welcome, this marks the second consecutive year that President David Boren has wrestled with other college and university presidents to keep tuition and fees in the state low. Last year at the height of the economic downturn, he also pushed through a statewide tuition and fee freeze in spite of strong objections from many of his colleagues.

Over the past decade, Boren has not always been a strong advocate for affordability in higher education. Indeed, in the six years after the state Legislature removed strict statutory caps, tuition and fees at the two comprehensive research institutions in the state increased 181 percent, at over five times the rate of growth in per capita personal income.

However, he is not necessarily completely to blame. Tuition and fees have been rising across the country, and advocates of these increases in the state have always been quick to point out that Oklahoma remains well below its peers in the Big 12.

Given the current economic climate, these people are now biding their time — maintaining that a dramatic tuition and fee hike will be necessary to make up for this period so that the state’s colleges and universities can “keep up” with their peer institutions elsewhere in the nation. And, as the state’s budget crisis becomes more acute, we are likely to hear much more from them.

However, even in higher education, eventually economic reality must come crashing in. And the simple fact is that tuition and fee levels cannot continue to spiral out of control – increasing at rates which far exceed any other sector in the economy. Like the bubble in the housing market, it is simply not a sustainable economic trend.

Numerous studies and reports have been released documenting the increasing burden of student debt, and now it’s not uncommon to see news articles about graduate or professional students leaving school with more than $100,000 in student loans.

Meanwhile, the value of a college degree continues to lose much of its luster.

For decades, the college graduate’s average wage rose well above the pace of inflation. However, according to the Wall Street Journal, the typical weekly salary of a worker with a bachelor’s degree was actually 1.7 percent less in 2006 than it was in 2001 when one adjusted for inflation.

And in June, BusinessWeek reported that the widely held belief that college graduates earned $1 million more over the course of their lifetime was largely a myth. After taking out the outlying top 17 elite private universities, the average return on investment for the other 500 colleges and universities was actually far less — falling to less than $400,000 over 30 years when considering graduation rates.

In light of these conditions, people in higher education cannot continue to pretend that the principles of economics do not apply to them. For many years, administrators have shrugged off the notion that tuition and fee increases have any effect on educational access – just assuming that financial aid picks up the slack, in spite of extensive research to the contrary.

However, colleges and universities are subject to the same forces which drive other parts of the economy — forces like the law of supply and demand. And, just as the general public weathers these market corrections and adjusts its spending habits, colleges and universities must adapt to the reality that 7, 8, 9 and 10 percent annual tuition and fee increases are things rapidly receding into the past.

Boren seems to be one of the first to have grasped that.

­— Nicholas Harrison, law and business graduate