The University of Oregon’s Tuition and Fee Advisory Board (TFAB) is quickly ramrodding another rubber stamp proposal for UO President Michael Schill. They hope to have a recommendation for a “graduated tuition” plan on Schill’s desk by the end of the month. TFAB is holding s series of three 8 am public meetings in the next two weeks to pull it off. The graduated tuition proposal will lock in tuition rates for five years for incoming students but will allow TFAB to increase tuition for each incoming class. It isn’t clear if they will have to get approval from the Higher Education Coordinating Committee to make tuition increase over 5 percent if they only raise tuition for only a segment of the student population.

For students, this means the utter collapse of unity against tuition increases and the continuing marginalization of in-state students at UO. The TFAB board has continually stated that graduated tuition will expose UO to greater financial risk but are committed to the proposal as a marketing ploy to increase out of state enrollment. 

With the current rogues’ gallery of corporate oligarchs on the UO Board of Trustees, risk exposure sounds like the prefect recipe for crisis restructuring and institutional privatization.

Eric Howanietz

Eugene