It’s now late in the budgeting process for the Institute, which means the departments and schools that make up RPI have been thinking about all the things they want to do next year and making requests for money to fund those things. Soon the Board of Trustees will have to meet and decide which of those things is worth doing and where the money is going to come from. Usually, that means a tuition increase.
The Polytechnic would like the trustees to consider the following points when they determine what that increase will be.
First, most of us aren’t rich. Some families have given up a lot to send their child to RPI, and as tuition increases, financial matters at home only get worse. Second, over the past few years tuition increases have been significantly higher than the inflation rate. That means we’re all paying more than we expected to when we started out here. Third, the economy has been weak for a while now. Unemployment is up, jobs are hard to find after graduation, and no one is sure when things will turn around. All of these factors only add more burden to an already stressed situation.
The situation is even worse for graduate students. Most aren’t supported by their parents anymore but get by on a small research stipend while they continue to build up more and more debt due to tuition prices. We know the school is looking to increase its graduate population. Is increasing tuition going to help attract more graduate students?
Students already have a lot to worry about when facing the challenges of college. On top of all that, they shouldn’t have to worry about being buried up to their ears in debt when they’re done or whether they’re going to be able to get out of it.
If all of that doesn’t impress you, maybe this will: We find it hard to imagine what the cost of tuition will be when it’s time to send our kids to college. When we think about it, though, the sentiment expressed by most of us is: “My kids aren’t going to RPI.”
