Becky Pallack at the Star has been doing a good job on her Campus Correspondent blog highlighting the fact that undergrads at UA are facing a tuition and fee increase next year of nearly $2,000 (up from the nearly $550 tuition and fee increase they had this year and the $766 tacked-on “tuition surcharge”), but for some reason, this news has not made the printed paper, so folks may not know that they should be concerned.

I guess if you don’t mind going hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt or if your parents are rich enough to foot the bill, you have no concern. But if, like a few students I know, you will have to drop out of school because you know carrying $17,000 in debt (see bottom of this post) is a really bad idea and you’re caught in the financial-aid middle of parents making too much money for you to qualify for grants or need-based scholarships but not enough money to pay for their mortgage, car payments, health care, job retraining, etc. and cover the rumored hike – you may want to pay attention. And, for goodness sake, launch a massive protest.

The president’s proposals for saving their universities via tuition increases are due to the Arizona Board of Regents this Friday and will be made public at noon here. According to Pallack’s blog here, here and most importantly here, tuition will be up to at least $9,000 in 2011-12, which, one may guess, means it might jump to $8,000 for next year. That doesn’t count the hundreds of dollars of fees or the “temporary” surcharge, which two of the best unpaid investigative reporters in town do a bang-up job of reporting on – and revealing the nasty little secrets about – at The Desert Lamp here and here, respectively.

The increase may actually be worse than rumors. According to an anonymous professor at one of Arizona’s universities, for every $200 in tuition increases, based on UA’s current number of students and a financial-aid mix I don’t fully understand, the UA gets about $4 million in revenue. Since the state cut nearly $100 million from its funding of UA in the past two years and UA says they’ve absorbed $40 million through mergers and program cuts (see UA organizational chart before the 2-year Transformation Process and after), that leaves about $60 million UA has to raise through additional revenue. Using the figures above, that means tuition would have to increase about $3,000 per student over the next 2 years, if enrollment stays static. Of course, UA assumes an increase in enrollment – but with a huge tuition hike and the job situation in the toilet, maybe they won’t see an enrollment increase. (And please, do not be impressed with the university presidents saying they will also increase financial aid when they hike tuition. Their definition of “financial aid” includes loans, which, as anyone paying on a mortgage will tell you, is debt, not aid. Grants and merit or need-based scholarships are aid – meaning help. Loans are “help” you have to pay for, with interest, for a long time after you graduate.)

Keep in mind that UA has increased tuition and fees more each year of the past decade. UA officials blame this on the state’s lack of funding, although one could rightly argue that building fancy rec centers, dorms and hiring a VP for Health Affairs at $650,000 (and adding all these financial perks) could also have something to do with it. Looking back a couple years, I reported that UA, which rightly states that its tuition is still at the top of the bottom one-third of tuitions among peer universities, nonetheless has tuition hikes that are higher than average in the nation. Keep in mind also, that UA stands alone among the three universities in not offering some version of a fixed tuition or guaranteed tuition plan for students already on campus.

So, worried yet? Angry? You should be – and not just at the legislature for hacking their support of education (which does indeed deserve some outrage). Maybe you should also be a little miffed that UA is making it look like they care about students by proposing to offering lower tuition for degrees off the main campus but ignoring the needs of the nearly 39,000 undergrads currently on campus by jacking up their tuition. How about asking the cadre of vice presidents/provosts making more than $200K to take a salary cut (or at least institute a salary freeze) so students will have a lower tuition hike.

My prediction for Friday’s proposals is this: NAU’s John Haeger, who was the first to design – and stick with – a four-year-guaranteed tuition plan, will be creative about keeping tuition low. Michael Crow up at ASU will come up with some wiz-bang proposal that stops just short of buying Bolivia and building a new campus there, but will still find a way to increase enrollment through increasing tuition less than UA and will stick with some version of his piloted fixed tuition program. And UA’s Robert N. Shelton, emboldened by his faculty and their unspoken-in-polite-company belief that UA is Arizona’s true research university, that NAU should handle all the “low-end” undergraduate programs and that ASU should be Arizona’s “outreach” university, will eloquently propose that UA hike their tuition to at least $7,800 with proposed fees of at least $500 annually. Neither he nor Crow will rescind the temporary tuition surcharge of last year; I’m not sure about Haeger. If the student regent – or anyone on the board of regents – has the guts to try to stop this, as happened last year, no doubt another all-night, behind-closed-doors meeting with result in a flip-flop and…. a tuition increase.

Students and the public will have one chance and one chance only to comment on the proposed hikes: at the Arizona Board of Regents annual tuition hearing, March 1 from 5 p.m. ‐7 p.m. Comments are heard on a first‐come, first‐served basis, rotating through the three universities and can be no more than 3-minutes long. There are three places at UA to access the hearings: the Harvill Building, Room 211 on the Main Campus; in the Public Meeting Room, Room 203 at the Sierra Vista Campus; and at the UA Science and Technology Park,Building 9040, Room 2270 . Final tuition and fees for next year will be set at the board’s March 11 meeting at UA – but no one can comment at the meeting (although you can hold signs of protest quietly).

Tagging in New York

I don’t know if Tucson’s own Jon Justice has any children. If he does, I’m guessing they are not yet teens, because the parent of teenagers would be far less likely to comment as Justice did on this morning’s show about how grandparents (and parents, for that matter) can control teenagers all the time.

He was criticizing Tucson City Councilwoman Regina Romero for questioning a proposal to hold parents or guardians (including grandparents) of repeat taggers criminally liable for the graffiti these taggers stupidly throw up around town.

Anyone who has followed my writing knows I’m a hectoring scold when it comes to ineffective, lazy, do-nothing parenting. However, as someone who has survived the raising of four teens (three of whom are law-abiding, self-supporting young adults and one who is still in college and paying only half her way in the world), I can attest that even the most proactive, supervisory parenting cannot guarantee a kid won’t get involved w/ the wrong crowd. Does involved parenting LIMIT those chances? Absolutely. Is it a guarantee? No way. Why? Because you’re dealing with teenagers, who have the impulse control of a binge eater and the attention span of a goldfish.

Justice was going on (and on) about how parents and grandparents should take the “necessary action” to prevent their kids from tagging. Problem was, he never specified what this necessary action might entail – at least not during the 30 minutes I was listening. Does he think a rowdy teen, who has already proven through his actions that he could care less about the law, will just straighten up and fly right because Grandpa says so?

Should grandparents/guardians try to raise the kid well? Absolutely. Will grounding him or taking away his privileges keep an already troubled kid out of trouble? Probably not. I knew a woman who nailed the windows in her daughter’s bedroom shut and locked her door at night so the living-on-the-edge 15 y/old wouldn’t sneak out in the middle of the night. Guess what? The girl broke the window and left anyway.

Were these the most effective parents I knew? No – they’d spoiled the girl rotten when she was in elementary school and, once the monster was unleashed, they’d lost control. But it is an example of how parents can try hard with teens and still fail. The solution to troubled teens (and teens causing trouble) starts way earlier than the teen years and involves a lot more than saying, “No, you can’t.” Especially, IMHO, if you’re a senior citizen. I wonder if Justice was 65 or 70 and could remain fearless when faced with a strapping 16 y/o boy with a surfeit of attitude.

Before I had teenagers, I, too, saw things as very black and white: Parent does A and teen does B. That certainty flies right out the window when you’re in the thick of raising teens. Still, if the radio talk show host seriously believes punishing parents/grandparents for the criminal actions of their adolescent charges will cause those guardians to take the “necessary action” to stop the tagging, perhaps he should offer some solutions and suggestions as to what that action might be.

(A funny aside: Talking w/ one of our sons once about graffiti I said, “I just don’t get the point.” He explained taggers think they “own” a piece of property when they tag it, adding that he knew one who, pointing out his work on a freeway overpass, said, “That’s mine.” To which my son said, “No, dude, that’s still belongs the state.” Maybe what we need is education for taggers to understand the concept of “ownership”. )

This week has been a convergence of ah-ha moments, all loosely tied to my committment to blog my way through The Happiness Project (hereafter referred to as THP). A breakdown for readers:

First, I attended an event at my parish that featured a student preacher – my 20-year-old daughter. At one point she said something about people doing what they were born to do and how we should pay attention when God “moves things around” inside our hearts/souls. She was much more eloquent than I’m relating here and had more pearls of wisdom, but the epiphany I had when listening is this: I worry a lot – too much – about what everyone else thinks of my life choices, particularly when it comes to work.

As Gretchen Rubin writes in the March (or third) chapter of THP: “I have an idea of who I wish I were, and that obscures my understanding of who I actually am.” Can I get an amen from the choir on that? How great the world would be – or at least my little part of the world – if we could all just figure out who were were meant to be and accept that instead of trying to be someone else. So, that’s ah-ha moment #1: Do what you want, work where you want, regardless of the pay, prestige, or pressure from others.

A view of Ventana Canyon from the trail

Next, my husband and I went on a long hike on Ventana Canyon Trail. When he asked me to go I couldn’t figure out why I was so excited, and then I remembered what I discovered last month when I was reading the first part of THP – that I really like doing physical things outside with friends or family. If that is the case, I thought, why the heck has it been a month since I made time to do that??? Ah-ha moment #2: Schedule these physical-with-family/friends events twice a month instead of allowing time to go by.

Then, taking a social risk, I attended a women’s Faith Sharing group at my parish. It is co-led by a Dominican sister, new to both Tucson and the parish, and a student from the University of Arizona, and the age range is college sophomore through mid-life women. The last time I had the chance to participate in a group like this was when we lived in Alabama 17 years ago, and until I was sitting there on the couch listening to the insights these women shared, I didn’t realize just how much I’d missed it. More importantly, I didn’t realize how absolutely necessary that kind of connection is for my internal stability and external happiness. It was like finding a lost key to my heart. Ah-ha moment #3: Pay attention to what feeds your soul and make sure you get it.

Then finally, a writer on the Catholic Writers’ listserv mentioned that she was also reading THP and that Rubin’s list of books that “most influenced” her year-long Happiness Project included one written by a Catholic saint: the Story of a Soul, by St. Thérèse of Lisieux. The others were Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography and everything written by Samuel Johnson. That observation reminded me that I was supposed to be reading the book a little bit each day to blog about it and that  I was a slug for abandoning that original commitment. So, ah-ha moment #4: Stop trying to do a million things at once and just settle on a handful and actually do them. (So much to do… so little time to get it right!)

OK, so for those of you still reading here’s the low down on what I’ve read in THP lately: The February chapter is about “remembering love.” Rubin’s HP required that she quit nagging, fight right, not “dump” on her husband, stop expecting praise or appreciation, and “give proofs of love.” She offers plenty of lots of information on what research says about making happy marriages and relationships (here’s a video of her breaking some of it down – scroll down to “proofs of love” video), and is self-effacing when discussing her own struggles in the area. What stood out for me most was Rubin’s experience of a week of “Extreme Nice.” She spent one week with no criticism, no nagging and no snapping at her husband.

I’ve decided I’m going to try this Extreme Nice challenge myself next week – and believe me, it will be a

The object of my affection - and my Extreme Nice challenge - taking a break on the hike.

challenge, since I’m probably one of the most negatively tuned, critical people on earth. (Nothing like 25 years as a journalist to set your positivity meter to the minus side.) I’m not alone in this “think negative” trait, though: Polls show that lots of us – at home, in the work world, at stores and on the road – are thinking more negatively than ever. It is as though we’ve trained ourselves to focus on the negative and negate the positive. (Of course, the news probably doesn’t help, which is why you should read this Web site every day after you read your daily paper or scan the headlines on the Web.)

But there’s a good reason to flip our negative Nellie attitudes around: Personal and relational happiness. Marriages and relationships with more negative comments said daily than positive ones (even if those comments are framed as “jokes”) are 10 times more likely to be unhealthy, unhappy and end in a breakup. So, to go for healthy and happy, try to aim for a 3-to-1 ratio: For every one negative thought/emotion/comment you have, you need to have three positive ones. (Sure, the tire is flat, but at least it isn’t raining, you have a jack and the sun is still out so you don’t have to use a flashlight when changing the tire. Sure your husband leaves his socks on the floor, but he also reads to the kids each night, coaches your son’s T-ball team and remembers to put the toilet seat down.)

I am going to give it the old college try … starting in about 10 minutes. I’m still steaming about the woman who rear-ended me two weeks ago while talking on her cell phone. My car’s been in the shop since then and I just got a call saying that they might have to total it, which SUCKS because we’d finally saved up enough money to pay it off and if they total it, we’ll have to pay it off and buy another one … getting stuck with a car payment again. GRRRR!!! I did nothing wrong and I’m having to suffer for it, argh! So, all you talker-drivers out there? Please, do me a favor: Hang up and drive.