INDReporter

UL to hike tuition 10 percent

by Walter Pierce

After seven years of state universities getting squeezed by Gov. Bobby Jindal’s no-tax insanity and a lapdog Legislature, students in the University of Louisiana System will once again see their tuition rise via the hidden Jindal Tax.

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After seven years of state universities getting squeezed by Gov. Bobby Jindal’s no-tax insanity, a lapdog Legislature and a screwed-up state Constitution, students in the University of Louisiana System will once again see their tuitions rise via the hidden “Jindal Tax.”

A UL Lafayette spokesman announced Tuesday that tuition and fees for the UL System’s nine colleges have been approved and UL Lafayette students will pay 10 percent more for tuition in the coming semester. Tacking on a new general and auxiliary fee of $28.58, a UL undergrad who is enrolled for 12 credit hours will pay about $700 more per semester — from $3,436 to $4,128.

Martin Hall is putting a positive spin on the announced tuition/fee increases, noting that the hike brings UL closer to the Southern Regional Education Board average, moving UL in line with Louisiana Tech and UNO, and that the university will remain affordable.

UL is making the most of the increase, electing to allocate 10 percent of the new fees “toward financial assistance for need-based students, and also will increase merit-based scholarships.” Additional revenue will go toward academic resource and to grow auxiliary support.

“These funds will help make the university’s academic core even stronger and improve the overall student experience,” Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs Dr. James Henderson says in a release announcing the new hikes.

Kudos to Martin Hall for weathering the Jindal years, but Henderson’s optimism is lipstick on a pig. Higher education in Louisiana has endured $700 million in cuts over the last several years — cuts levied in part because so many other state programs are protected in the Constitution, leaving health care and higher education as virtually the only cookie jars legislators can raid in lean times.

And the times have been lean indeed since Jindal was sworn in, signed Grover Norquist’s no-tax pledge and faithfully refused any attempts to raise revenue even as the Legislature eliminated the Stelly Plan, helping turn a $1 billion surplus inherited from Gov. Kathleen Blanco — a surplus due in large part to short-term federal hurricane-recovery funding and the economic activity it stimulated — into deficits as far as the eye can see. The Legislature avoided more cuts to higher ed at the 11th hour of the recent session through smoke, mirrors and medical marijuana.

Over the last five years, tuition at UL Lafayette rose 55 percent. Now it’s going up another 10 percent. Jindal can say on the stump in Iowa or New Hampshire that he never raised taxes during his two terms as governor of Louisiana. But we know that’s BS: college students and their families are paying a lot more thanks to his (and the Legislature’s) fiscal irresponsibility.

Read our February cover story, “We Get What We Vote For,” for more.