Hand it over

LITTLE ROCK — THIS WAS the historic year the University of Arkansas did not raise tuition for students at its Fayetteville campus. For the first time in 24 years. Which is just the right precedent for a state land-grant university to set. It’s there to educate students, not make a profit.

But now it’s back to the harsh realities of swelling enrollment, declining support from the state, and ever higher expenses. And the U of A is asking for 4.77 percent more in tuition and fees for its full-time students.

That would make the cost of signing up for 30 credit hours of undergraduate studies at Fayetteville the highest in Arkansas: $6,767 a year for in-state students.

The university’s Fort Smith campus would seek an even bigger increase in tuition: 6.91 percent-although its full-time undergraduate cost would be lower: $4,918.

None of the chancellors, administrators or trustees on the university’s various campuses seem pleased at the prospect of continuing to ramp up tuition, nor should they be. This is a relatively poor state, and higher education is one of the surest routes to doing better in life. And not just economically.

But what choice did the various branches of the university have but to raise tuition rates? Enrollment at the five campuses in the UofA system grew by some 3,600 students last year even while their administrators had to deal with $8.5 million in state budget cuts. The state’s share of the cost of higher education in Arkansas dropped from 62 percent of a full-time student’s expenses in 1998-99 to 49 percent in 2008-09, according to a report from the state’s Department of Higher Education last October. Nor does that take inflation into account, and its steady erosion of the dollar’s purchasing power.

The president of the university system, B. Alan Sugg, says projected growth in enrollment, combined with declining support from the state, have obliged the schools to increase tuition and fees to cover expenses. The additional money would help raise the pay of most faculty and staff, and provide state-mandated raises for other employees. It would also help pay for a 3-percent increase in health-care premiums.

G. David Gearhart, chancellor of the Fayetteville campus, says the 4.77 percent tuition increase is the bare minimum that would allow the school to maintain its standards. The higher cost of everything from energy to equipment, plus raises for faculty, has to be met somehow. And raising tuition rates would seem the likeliest way.

Just up Interstate 540, the board of trustees at Northwest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville has approved a tuition increase from 6 to 7 percent. That fast-growing campus faces a $1-million shortfall in 2011 if its enrollment should increase by, say, 10 percent. It’s the paradox of success: The more students a school attracts, the more it must pay to educate them. It’s got to maintain its facilities and buy new technology to do the job right.

Those who emphasize all those scholarships that the Arkansas lottery is due to provide may not have considered how much of that assistance will be offset by ever higher tuition. Back in February, the Legislature set the size of lottery-funded scholarships in 2010-11 at $5,000 a year at the four-year universities, $2,500 for students at two-year colleges. But as tuition goes up, those stipends will cover less and less of the expense of a college education.

Education, it turns out, is expensive-whether the state or the student is footing the bill. Or both are. But there is this consolation: Getting a college education isn’t nearly as costly as failing to get one.