Public colleges feel sting of budget cuts

Whacking $15 million from the budget at Amherst cost 95 employees their jobs this year. It will also affect 136 athletes and 10 staffers who wave goodbye this fall to men's and women's water polo and gymnastics, men's track-and-field and tennis, and women's volleyball.

Other states are going much further. Tuition hikes on top of budget cuts are likely in Indiana, Mississippi, Montana, Tennessee, and Washington, the NCSL reports. In New Jersey, Gov. James McGreevey ordered a 5 percent cut in higher-education spending. At the same time, however, he warned university officials earlier this month that any school raising tuition more than 10 percent would be audited.

A decade ago, tuition increases were mostly swallowed by the public and legislators with little fuss. Now there are signs of resistance.

The Arizona Board of Regents approved a 3.9 percent in-state tuition hike – far below the 12 percent that university presidents wanted. In Wisconsin, the university regents in March battled legislators over budget cuts – threatening a freeze on undergraduate admissions if dollars were not restored.

Some universities are delivering truly enormous tuition increases.

Clemson University, South Carolina's flagship, announced a whopping 42 percent tuition increase. But protests led the school to rebate $600 to each student, cutting the increase to about 27 percent. At the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, tuitions will rise 21 percent.

Such increases will hit low- and moderate-income students harder this time because public colleges' tuition in the 1990s outpaced families' incomes during that period, eating up a larger share of family resources, Mr. Callan says.

Nationwide, in 2001-02, the average tuition charged by public four-year colleges and universities was $3,754, up 7 percent from $3,487 the year before. That's a big jump – on top of other big jumps.

Public schools' tuition and fees rose 40 percent during the 10-year period ending in 2000-01, compared with only 33 percent at private four-year colleges, the College Board reports.

The result is that even hard-working low-income students like Demetrio Johnson may decide not to attend – or end up deep in debt – because of higher tuition.

Even though his school's tuition hikes have been among the lowest of the Big Ten universities, the University of Illinois at Chicago raised tuition $500 last fall – and will boost it another $500 this coming fall.

Mr. Johnson, a 24-year-old honors student with a 4.5 grade point average, is putting himself through school; his family can't afford to help him. So, he works two jobs, allowing himself only the luxury of a phone in his tiny apartment in downtown Chicago. He's $10,000 in debt right now – and expects that to grow substantially by the time he graduates next year.

He's taken out the maximum in loans. He's won a number of scholarships and applied for many others. He's become a fixture around the college aid office. Still he's short of cash for summer school.

"Handling the financial pressure is tough," Johnson says. "But I'll get through it. I know I have to keep fighting."

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