God Blogging will be empty for the next three weeks while I’m on vacation, letting God’s grace find me away from the computer and the craziness of the past year. It will be a great, and needed, break. The past few months journeying with my sister in law and her cancer has taught me that time is short and I really need to get better at enjoying whatever life gives me – especially a vacation.

If you’re wanting general God news in the meantime, check out Religion News Service. If you’re looking for inspiration, Jessica’s Daily Affirmation is still my top pick. If you want to keep up with what I cover discuss most around here – the Catholic Church – go see Rocco over at Whispers, or for a different – and really thoughtful – Catholic look at the news, see Mary at OSV Daily Take. If you’re wondering about faith in general, you might want to visit Flirting with Faith, and if you’d like to keep up on what two UA students are thinking about anything and everything Arizona higher ed, go here. I’ll see you at the end of July.

UA students and parents will need lots more money next year for tuition and fees if President Robert Shelton's proposed 31-ercent increase is adopted at next week's Arizona Board of Regents meeting in Tucson.

UPDATE: At least one member of the Arizona Board of Regents has a bit of reluctance re: UA President Robert Shelton’s proposed 31-percent increase in tuition and fees for next year. I checked with the Ernest Calderon, ABOR president this morning via Twitter and got this response: “The UofA request seems unreasonably high. But I haven’t prejudged it. I am putting pencil to paper to analyze it before the 11th. EC”

I wasn’t at the Arizona Board of Regents tuition and fee hearing Monday evening, but thanks to the wiz-kids at The Desert Lamp putting up a live stream, I was able to watch some of it. Unfortunately, the recording of that livestream does not seem to be working this morning (EML – if I’m wrong on that, put a good link in the comments section, OK?), but I’m grateful it was there for the watching last night.

I was heartened to see an overflow room of students at the various hearing sites and – after students from ASU more or less said they didn’t like President Michael Crow’s proposed 14-to-19 percent increase but would “reluctantly” support it – glad to see UA student leaders decry President Robert Shelton’s 31-percent proposed money grab. (Note: If you want the most extensive reporting on the hearing, go here, where the Republic’s Anne Ryman was given the column inches to offer the details, background, and more student voices than that provided by our local daily press.)

When the public was allowed to speak – and I only got to see a handful of speakers due to time constraints – both students and parents described personal situations that should have (but maybe didn’t) touched the hearts of the Regents and Shelton. Students blamed the state legislators for hacking higher ed to death, with good reason, but added that the Regents need to think outside the box to fund universities and that Shelton’s proposal was out of the question. Apparently, they didn’t agree with Shelton’s statement that “we’ve cut as far as we can go.”

The proposed increase was predictably justified by Shelton stating that the UA would, of course, increase financial aid through the Regent required 17-percent financial aid “set aside” and that most UA students graduate with a reasonable amount of debt. I hate to sound cynical, but the 17-percent set aside won’t negate the effects of the 31-percent proposed increase for the majority of UA students and I guess it all depends on what one considers “reasonable” when speaking of debt.

It amazes me that any responsible higher education official would encourage debt in the midst of a recession, knowing that college graduates are unable to find jobs that match their expensive undergraduate degrees. The last thing they should be doing is going into debt. Case in point: I was headed to an orientation session for my student teaching internship and stopped at Jamba Juice to get what would be my dinner. The young woman serving me had a name tag proclaiming: “Member since February 2010.” I commented on that and she explained that she had graduated from the UA with a degree in elementary education, and she’d been unable to find a job in her field. She detailed how she’d looked for “anything, any job at all” for six weeks before finally landing behind the juicing counter. Her biggest fear? Not being able to pay off her student loans.

I’m sure Shelton is trying his best. He’s the second-largest employee in Southern Arizona and he doesn’t want more layoffs (Lord knows Tucson doesn’t need them). But there has to be a better way than continuing to jack up tuition and fees beyond the reach of the middle class. (Remember that the very poor have access to Pell Grants and, at UA, the Arizona Assurance Program, and the very rich need no help, but the middle class is, well, squeezed in the middle with tuition and fee increases.)

As a commenter on the KVOA web site said regarding tuition and fees:

no, the university will not work with students who cannot afford tuition. my annual tuition costs me $26K already because i’m taking so many classes so i can graduate in 4 years, and financial aid said they would only give me $5K for the whole year…..private lenders wont lend me money because i’ve already taken too many loans out, let alone that they have a cap at $25K for one year….so what am I supposed to do now? whore myself out on 4th ave?

And about those fees: The Desert Lamp has spent much of its energy tracking the fact that student fees are no longer voted on by the students and last night released a trenchant statement showing how the fees have increased over the past four years and challenging Shelton to reinstate the prior method of determining fees. (Interesting fact: when allowed to vote on student fees, studetns voted down poorly planned fees three times – right before UA switched to a “student survey” method of passing fees.). Connor Mendenhall from the Lamp has started a Mad Fee Party Facebook group, which as of this morning had 1,075 members.

Fees, as anyone who has a kid in college knows, are just another word for “tuition increase”, especially when those fees are not critical to the university’s academic mission. Which brings me to an important point: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone from the UA Student Services office argue that UA has to provide full-service dorms and a rec center with a pro shop and juice bar “because students want them.” Maybe students do want those things – but when given the choice between professors in classes and a rock-climbing wall, I think most would choose the latter. Of course, with a student-survey type of “vote”, one can’t get a true assessment of what most students want since they only survey a small percentage.

The final tuition and fee rates for next year will be set March 11 in Tucson at the Board of Regents meeting. No public comment will be allowed, but silent protests are. My prediction will be that Shelton will offer a slightly lower proposal, saying he’s listened to the students, and the students will support it, in spite of it being too high, convinced that they’ve “won” something. They don’t really have any voice, afterall, unless the voting student regent can rally a couple other regents to his side and vote down Shelton’s proposal. Recall that happened last year at this time, and the student regent was, IMHO, fear-mongered into switching his vote to allow for last year’s increase (and the “temporary”, now-permanent, tuition surcharge).

And if the tuition and fee increase doesn’t come below 16 percent, my advice to local high school grads would be to head up the road to NAU, which although proposing a 16-percent increase for new students, offers those students the guarantee of no tuition increase (although possible fee increases) for four years. About half of the current NAU students are already on a fixed-tuition plan and will only see about $160/year increase in fees next year. Shelton has refused for three years to listen to student requests for a fixed-tuition plan.

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).