Rising tuition is frustrating, but don’t start the protest just yet

The bad news is the cost of attending Wesleyan is going up again in the next academic year. The roughly 5 percent increase will provide parents and students with a bill approaching $43,000. The good news is that while this may be the highest tuition in Connecticut, it is in step with many peer schools that are also raising tuition this year.

There is more good news too. According to the College Board, the tuition colleges advertise is generally much higher than the amount most students pay, due to grants and loans. Nationally, four-year private institutions rose 6 percent between the 2002-2003 school year and this academic year. But, the organization says that while tuition has increased considerably in the past few years, so has financial aid. More financial aid was available in the 2002-2003 school year than ever before.

It’s easy to complain that college costs are starting to look astronomical, but there seems to be little the University can do about it. As Bromberg told the Argus in November, 2004, the school does the most it can to reduce costs. “We do more with less than our peer schools,” she said at the time.

Contemporary students also expect a lot from an institution. Besides first-rate professors and courses, students also look for sports club-quality work out facilities, great housing and endless dining options. As the recent protests show, students are always looking for better services and facilities.

We applaud the Administration for working to reduce costs and trust they are doing as much as they can to make the financial burden of a Wesleyan education manageable for as many families as possible. We remind them, however, that there is a limit, and seeing the numbers slowly crawl upward is nothing but frustrating for those of us who turned down much cheaper educations to come here. Wesleyan continues to be need-blind in its admissions process and we hope this practice will prevent the high cost of attendance from changing the makeup of our student body in the future, even if the sticker shock keeps getting worse