Ed Board
A recent Leader-Telegram article said University of Wisconsin System leaders have given approval for an increase in graduate and nonresident tuition at five schools.
UW-La Crosse, UW-Milwaukee, UW-Platteville, UW-Stout and UW-Whitewater have all been approved for these tuition changes by the Board of Regents. Undergraduate tuition is still frozen until the end of next year but graduate and nonresident tuition rates can still be adjusted.
Nonresident undergraduate tuition at La Crosse will increase 3.7 percent, 1 percent at Milwaukee and 3.4 percent at Whitewater. All five schools want to increase graduate tuition. Increases range from a half percent to nearly 18 percent depending on the program.
Members of the editorial board were divided on whether a tuition increase like this would be good for UW-Eau Claire.
One member said increasing graduate and nonresident tuition would lower enrollment rates from those groups, which they said would either lead to an overall lower income rate for the school, or a potential lowering of enrollment standards for college.
“It hurts the institution, it hurts the society as a whole, especially at an economic level when you’re having that,” one members said. “And that’s the only way you could make up for that. I think in the long term you will be losing a lot of tuition from potential people out of state.”
Other members agreed that the state of the UW System as a whole was not looking good to outsiders. However, one member said it has been hard with the recent $250 million budget cuts, and since undergraduate tuition cannot physically be raised, the universities will have to raise money from other groups.
“It’s an unfortunate reality that the money you have as a university contributes to the quality of education you’re able to provide,” another member said. “It pays for your workers, it pays for your utilities, and if this university needs the money to give people a quality education, I think raising tuition is what they need to do.”
The editorial board voted against the tuition increase six to two.
Andrew Slater • Apr 14, 2016 at 11:38 pm
THOUGHTS FROM A BLACK CONSERVATIVE AT U of W
To call somebody a racist should be a very serious matter. A racist is a person who believes that one race is inherently superior or inferior to another. It’s not intelligence or goodness that determines an individual’s worth, it’s the color of their skin. To say that racism is foolish and stupid – not to mention evil – is to understate the case. But, according to many of their critics, conservatives are that stupid and that evil.
But with few exceptions, conservatives are neither.
So why is the charge even made? The answer is primarily political, i.e. to maintain black support for liberals and liberal policies.
To back up this charge, the accusers point to conservative policies. So let’s examine some conservative policies to see if they are, indeed, racist.
THE LONG-STANDING CONSERVATIVE OPPOSITION TO AFFIRMATIVE ACTION:
This is a good place to start. It was Democratic President John F. Kennedy who first used the term “affirmative action” in 1961. But affirmative action, in the way that we think of it now, wasn’t implemented until 1970, during the administration of a Republican president, Richard Nixon. The theory was that, because of historical discrimination, blacks were at a competitive disadvantage to other races and ethnicities. To erase that disadvantage, standards that most Blacks presumably couldn’t meet had to be lowered. Some might make the case that this policy had some utility when this policy was first put in place. But that was a long time ago. The conservative position is that Blacks have repeatedly proven that they can compete with anyone without the benefits – the demeaning benefits, I might add – of lower standards. There are countless examples of Black success in every field at every level. The policy is no longer necessary.
But the conservative argument goes further. Study after study shows that, in the case of college admissions, affirmative action actually hurts many Blacks. By lowering standards for Blacks and some other minority students, colleges set many of these students up for failure. They get placed in schools for which they’re not prepared. And high Black drop-out rates confirm this view. So does common sense. If white students with mediocre SAT scores were admitted to Ivy League schools, they too would be set up to fail.
Let’s do the math. Conservatives believe that Blacks and other minorities are ever bit as capable as whites of succeeding as policemen, firemen, businessmen, lawyers, doctors, politicians and college students.
Yet for this belief, conservatives are called “racist”.
The irony, of course, is that those who accuse conservatives of being racist believe that Blacks and other minorities are not as capable as whites of succeeding and therefore still need affirmative action almost a half-century after it was first implemented.
Let’s look at another issue where this contrast between conservatives and those who accuse them of being racist is even more starkly drawn: voter ID.
Conservatives say that America should require that every voter present an ID when he or she votes, just as European countries do in order to keep their elections honest. Are all of these democracies racist? Of course not. Yet the accusers say the conservatives who support voter ID laws are racist. Why do they say this? Because, they argue, it’s really a ruse to prevent Blacks and other minorities from voting since many of them just aren’t capable of acquiring an ID.
Can you get more condescending than that?
Let’s be real. You need an ID to drive, to fly, to buy a beer, even to purchase some cold medicines. Whites can do it but blacks can’t?
Tell me who the racists are again?
One more example. It’s conservatives who push for school vouchers which would allow all parents, not just wealthy ones, to choose their childrens’ school. It’s the other side that doesn’t trust minority parents to select an appropriate school for their children. Why aren’t the people who compel black children to stay in terrible schools the racists?
At some point, maybe you’ll start asking yourself, as I did, who really is obsessed with race, and whose policies really hurt blacks and minorities?
Maybe it’s not who you think it is.
Andrew Slater, Class of 2015