The students pay -- again

Dr. David Sweet, president of Youngstown State University, makes a persuasive case that not all YSU's financial problems are of its own making. State funding is 14 percent less in fiscal year 2004 than it was in 1996.
That's a hard hit for any public institution, and it reflects a lack of commitment to higher education that can be seen in Ohio's drop to 43 out of 50 states in per capita spending on higher education.
That said, Dr. Sweet, the university board of trustees and every employee at the university must realize that while the state's failure to support higher education is regrettable, the shortfalls cannot continue to be shifted onto the backs of the students and their tuition-paying parents.
The board of trustees, sitting as the finance and facilities committee, has approved a 5.75 percent tuition increase, which will add $364 a year to in-state tuition, bringing it to $6,697. Students coming from within a 100-mile radius of campus will pay $9,321, and other nonresidents will pay $12,204.
YSU can boast that it remains the least expensive of Ohio's larger state-supported universities. It can even point out that the increase could have been 6 percent under a state -imposed cap, which would have added another $15 to an Ohio resident's tuition. But those pronouncements come as little consolation to the student who makes $6 an hour in a part-time job and must now work an extra 60 hours to pay for the tuition increase.
No one at the university apparently feels that they should sacrifice rather than the students -- their customers. Businesses make difficult decisions when costs exceed income by eliminating jobs, freezing or cutting pay and reducing or cutting fringe benefits.
Window of opportunity
Dr. Sweet points out that the university has a year and a half during which none of its labor contracts expire. He describes that as a window during which labor-management relations can be improved.
We suggest that it is a period during which the administration is obliged to show that it is willing to trim its expenses and demonstrate to the rank and file that everyone at YSU is going to have to start making sacrifices.
After nine straight years of tuition increases, it is time to give the students a break. The next round of negotiations at YSU must not not result in raises that the university cannot afford.
Trustees buckled last fall, five days into a strike by professors and two weeks into a strike by classified employees. A new faculty contract providing increases of 3 percent, 3.5 percent and 3.5 percent over its three-year life was overly generous. The pact included minuscule co-payments toward a health care plan that costs the university $13,000 per year per employee.
The administration was afraid of the effects of a long strike, but the unions should understand that their members will ultimately be the bigger losers in a strike that results in a loss of enrollment.