Tuition increase backers prevailed in a split vote by Wayne State's Board of Governors, approving an 8.9% increase for resident undergraduates.
The 2013-14 boost is "the highest increase in years," Kim Kozlowski of The Detroit News reports from the scene.
The Board of Governors on Wednesday approved the tuition increase 6-2 as part of the university’s $576-million budget. Governors Debbie Dingell and Diane Dunaskiss voted no. . . .
“I am afraid that students won’t be able to come here or go to any university if this trend continues,” Dunaskiss said.Dingell added that she opposes the increase because lawmakers have not made higher education a priority, even though business leaders see it as a vehicle for economic growth.
One of those in the majority, first-term board member Kim Trent, explains her vote in a 374-word statement on her Facebook page. Excerpts:
I agonized over the decision. . . . Our state appropriation for 2014 is the same as it was for 1989, not adjusted for inflation. Meanwhile, WSU’s tuition rate has been artificially low when compared with Michigan’s two other high activity research universities, MSU and UM. . . .
We need to step up our game to better serve our students."
Wedsnesday, 8 a.m. article:
Wayne State's departing president flunks Economic 101, as well as Introduction to Marketing, in he view of The Detroit News' editorial board.
It urged the Board of Governors to reject the proposed "huge tuition hike,
"The boost would bring the five-year increase at WSU to just over 40 percent," the paper's lead editorial notes.
The desire to be a premier research institution must be balanced against Wayne’s higher mission of serving the educational needs of Metro Detroit, where a large number of students from poor and working-class families and older students who attend class part-time while working have always found a home at Wayne.
This tuition hike, and the large increases that preceded it, puts that mission at risk.
In contrast, the editorial says, UM and MSU "have announced tuition hikes of just over 1 percent for next year" -- and they have waiting lists, while WSU enrollment has slipped to 29,786 from 31,260 five years ago.
EMU has announced a 3.6% tuition increase.
The News derides retiring President Allan Gilmour's claim that WSU "can’t achieve what we want to do by being a low-price, moderate-cost university.”
