For 1996-97, it was necessary to increase tuition approximately 50 percent for most students to accommodate the new fiscal realities. For 1997-98, tuition was increased another 20 to 30 percent for most students. Not surprisingly, enrollments declined 6 percent of
For 1996-97, it was necessary to increase tuition approximately 50 percent for
most students to accommodate the new fiscal realities. For 1997-98, tuition was
increased another 20 to 30 percent for most students.
Not surprisingly,
enrollments declined 6 percent of the system in Fall 1996. Fall 1997
enrollments declined 4 percent, and Fall 1998 enrollments declined 1 percent
overall.
The Pell award maximum will go up to $3,300. President Clinton
said in his last State of the Union address, “Now, 67 percent of high school
graduates are going on to college. That’s up 10 percent since 1993. Yet
millions of families still strain to pay tuition costs.”
Hundreds of
thousands of people in Hawai’i live from paycheck to paycheck, or are dependent
on those who do. As hard as they work, they still don’t have the opportunity to
save for college.
Women still earn only 75 cents for every dollar men earn.
One in three Hawaiian children grows up without a father. These children are
five times more likely to live in poverty than children with both parents at
home.
In a recent year, 27 of 30 tuition waivers for graduate students from
Singapore were awarded to men. At the same time, laws in Singapore disadvantage
a single woman who heads a household.
Waivers of the nonresident
differentials relate to the UH’s Asian and Pacific mission. But times change.
The Japanese student my family housed for free in the 1960s is now the
president of a pharmaceutical company in Japan.
Thirty percent of Hawai’i
high school graduates who go on to college anywhere go to the mainland, 62
percent come to a UH campus, and 8 percent enroll at a Hawai’i private
college.
How has the 1996-98 tuition increase affected the mix of
students?
Are the best students leaving in droves?
According to the
Jan. 28, 2000 Chronicle of Higher Education, 47.6 percent of United States high
school graduates who go on to college prefer a college with a very good
academic reputation, while 20.5 percent wanted to live near home.
The
period of tuition increases at the UH coincides with its reduction in rank by
US News & World Report. What does it mean to say that UH, a third tier
institution, has a tuition which is $241 less than that of U.C.L.A., which is
ranked third overall among national public universities?
What will be the
result of cost if the UH exceeds that of the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
ranked eighth, and the University of Washington, in thirteenth place?
The
tuition and fee comparisons, 1998-99, UH Community Colleges and Benchmark
Institutions, can be misleading because only one California Community College
is listed.
There are over 100 such, the tuition is $270, not the $410
listed, and according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, January 21, 2000,
total state spending in California on higher education will increase by next
year from $7.8 billion to $8.2 billion.
The man who appoints regents
attended Harbor College, before transferring to U.C.L.A., so regents will be
aware that street-wise kids from Kalihi might consider a $1,300 tuition at KCC
an imposition.
Between 1995-96 and 2011-12 the number of high school
graduates will increase 31 percent in the West. At the January 20, 2000
University of California regents’ meeting, the Berkeley campus was ordered to
accommodate 4,000 more students within the first decade of this millennium.
A new Merced campus is in the works. Applications to U.C.L.A. for the
Class of 2004 numbered 37,460 (of whom 13,780 were Asian-Americans).
UH
will become a backwater unless it lowers tuition and reevaluates its Asian and
Pacific mission vis a vis California.
Richard Thompson
