Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

EDITORIAL: Tuition freeze is just a cheap stunt
Staff Editorial
Washington Square News (NYU)
01/31/2007

(U-WIRE) NEW YORK — Princeton University announced that it would not raise tuition for the 2007-08 academic year, leaving it at $33,000. The overall cost of attending Princeton will rise, however, since room and board fees are increasing by 19 percent.

We can't say it's a bad thing that Princeton is freezing its tuition for the next year, especially if this leads other colleges to follow suit. But is it really a freeze if the overall cost of attending rises 4.2 percent (to $43,980) because of those sneaky housing costs? Besides, Princeton can't keep tuition at that nice, round $33,000 forever — after all, there's no freeze on inflation.

A headline in the Chronicle of Higher Education proclaims Princeton is freezing tuition for 2007-08, and that is what most people will remember about this story. But it's simply a brilliant public-relations job made by a school that has the money to do it.

While freezing tuition is a nice bonus for rich students at Princeton, it won't affect the less affluent ones — their expected contributions are determined by the federal government, and Princeton already replaces their loans with grants. A tuition freeze can't create an automatic meritocracy, erasing the inequality that comes from unequal access to financial resources at the high school and college level. The Ivies have collectively made college education more financially manageable — but only at the Ivies.

Considering that Princeton's tuition stabilization is misleading, this feels like a PR move that will ultimately make Princeton look good and other schools — New York University included — look cheap.

At this point you might be thinking, "Who cares if it's a PR move? I want cheaper tuition." Well, it's much easier for Princeton to freeze tuition (and offer grants) because of their $13 billion endowment, which increased 19.5 percent last year. Princeton has the fifth-highest endowment in the country. NYU's endowment is only about $1.55 billion.

An honest tuition freeze — where our total cost to attend doesn't increase at all — would be quite nice. Sadly, NYU just doesn't have that kind of money

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