UW-La Crosse Stirs Debate Over Tuition

LA CROSSE, Wis. -- As a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, Carmen Wilson likes the idea of sharply raising tuition to hire more professors and recruit more poor and minority students.

But as the middle-class parent of a college student, she's not so sure about the public university's plan to increase tuition by $220 per semester to pay for the expansion.

"I ask myself, would I be willing to donate that much to the university for those causes?" Wilson said. "It's absolutely a private school way of looking at it."

UW-La Crosse has unleashed a wave of debate over its plan to expand without a dime of new state money. The experiment _ if approved by the governor and lawmakers next year _ could be copied by schools around the country looking for a creative way to find revenue, university officials predict.

The debate here is not about whether diversity and quality are worthwhile goals for a university, but about the price that's worth paying for them.

The plan calls for an increase in tuition of $1,320 _ on top of any annual statewide tuition hikes for inflation _ over three years. The increases would be grandfathered so it would only affect new students starting in fall 2008.

The extra money _ eventually hitting $15 million a year _ would pay for adding 1,000 students, more financial aid and scholarships for low-income students and 100 more professors. The goal would be for half of the new students to be minorities or low-income.

With a recent national report card failing 43 states on college affordability, and a national commission on higher education forcefully calling on colleges to control costs, some at schools like Wisconsin-La Crosse wonder if its new goals are worth the price.

Critics say the increase would hit middle-class families already struggling with tuition costs that have been raised to make up for state budget cuts. Tuition at the school this year is $5,555, up 57 percent from five school years ago.

Others balk at the university's goal of using the money, in part, to ramp up efforts to recruit minorities to the 94 percent white school. Still others say the state, not students, should fund the expansion.

Both candidates for governor _ Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle and his Republican challenger, Mark Green _ have questioned the program. Green pledged to stop "tuition hikes for diversity." Doyle's spokesman has said he doubts the plan would make the university more accessible.

Elizabeth Hitch, interim chancellor of the school in this city of 52,000 along the Mississippi River, said the plan represents administrators' best effort to maintain quality and increase access without additional state dollars.