Balancing a budget is difficult for anyone, whether you’re only worried about rent, food, and electric or you’re trying to monitor the expenditures and income for a college with four campuses.
LCC’s Board of Education has faced particularly significant challenges since 2000, when state aid ceased to cover the increasing operation costs of the college. In fact, state appropriations dropped 10 percent from the previous two-year biennium in fiscal years 2009-2011. Support has been reduced another 9 percent for the current biennium, with a likelihood of further reductions.
Coupled with tax income that’s increasingly difficult to collect, and alarmingly uncertain economic conditions, tuition per credit has more than doubled in the last 10 ten years — from $34 per credit to $86 per credit.
This figure includes the 2.4 percent increase passed during the December board meeting, which will take effect in the next academic year.
According to the college’s Long-Term Financial Plan, “Lane’s board has heard from its students that maintaining current service levels is their highest priority and has acted accordingly by raising tuition.”
However, during the December board meeting there were no student representatives present who could speak on behalf of the students regarding the $2 tuition increase, despite the specific request by a board member to hold the vote until student input could be considered.
ASLCC President Mario Parker-Milligan was slated to speak, but he was not in attendance due to a missed bus.
Normally The Torch, as an outlet for student opinion, would emphatically oppose any action, such as raising tuition, which makes higher education less accessible.
However, we support this tuition increase.
LCC faces considerable challenges continuing to develop and update its campuses; provide student services and ensure the fiscal sustainability of the college.
Especially considering the increase does not exceed the Higher Education Price Index, which is a measure of the inflation rate, adjusted for cost increases of higher education for the fiscal year.
LCC’s enrollment has grown over 40 percent since 2007, but state funding has not increased during that time, leaving staff stretched too thin.
The effects can be seen in the long lines at the bookstore, financial aid and counseling centers, as well as in the larger class sizes, and scarce information technology and maintenance staff.
Meanwhile, bonds have insufficiently covered the necessary updates to the physical conditions of the college, and many of the necessary remodels require major seismic upgrades well beyond what the college can afford.
The largest variable in LCC’s public resources is state appropriation. According to the long-term financial plan, “The upcoming state revenue forecasts for the current biennium are predicted to continue the decline. Therefore, Lane should not rely on substantial increases in state revenue to meet the needs of future budgets.”
Seemingly, LCC’s board is now charged with finding a solution using long-term, self -sustainable income through entrepreneurial developments, such as the student-housing complex being built next to the Downtown Center. Otherwise, tuition will continue to climb to meet the growing needs of the college, and students will end up bearing the financial burden. This would make education unaffordable for many students, thus undermining one of the most important tenants of community college: its accessibility.
The Torch supports this inflationary increase in tuition to accommodate the college’s growing costs, but believes that bigger and better solutions need to be pursued in order to ensure both the affordability of a college education and the longevity of this institution.
