“49th in state-funded financial aid”

by David Safier

The bottom doesn't belong to Arizona's spending on K-12 education alone. According to a Star article about growing university tuition costs, we're at the bottom in the amount the state kicks in for financial aid to university students as well. That means students who pay full tuition subsidize those who pay less.

The regents require 17 percent of tuition and fees to be set aside for need-based financial aid.

The UA goes beyond that amount to fund some merit-based aid.

And that, of course, helps drive tuition up.

But tuition redistribution isn't the prime mover behind the increases.

The Legislature has cut UA's appropriation by about 25 percent, or about $100 million in two years.

These days, it always circles back to our Republican-majority legislature.

The Arizona constitution says university instruction should be "as nearly free as possible." But the terms "nearly free" and "as possible" leave a lot of wiggle room.

[T]he Arizona Supreme Court's interpretation of "as nearly free as possible" is that resident tuition shall be neither "excessive nor unreasonable."

I have nothing against high university tuition if it's balanced out with generous financial aid — kind of a "progressive tuition," comparable to progressive taxation. That being said, I went to U.C. Riverside for almost nothing, and that's my ideal for public education. But if we need to raise tuition, cost should not stop qualified students from attending. Education is the greatest social mobility tool there is, and keeping promising, low income students out of universities denies them the opportunity to better themselves and denies the rest of us the social and economic benefit of their intellectual gifts.