UNM’s decision shows dollars trump diplomas

Editor,

Once again the UNM administration has made a horrible decision in order to make more money. In a massive, deliberate misunderstanding of everything about the whole situation, UNM has increased tuition to a higher rate for part-time students than full-time students.

I received an email from the registrar claiming that the change, in which students will pay $3,423.00 for 12 credit hours versus $3,223.35 for 15-18 hours, is an incentive to get students to finish on time and to stay “on course.” This will, in fact, have the exact opposite effect. According to the Official Enrollment Report Fall 2011, part-time students make up roughly 1/3 of the student body, and this has stayed relatively steady since 2007.

UNM has a high percentage of nontraditional students (roughly 11,500 students take night or weekend classes, which are geared toward nontraditional and working students). These people simply cannot take 15 credit hours a week.

So what is going to happen? This increased tuition hardship will mean part-time students will take fewer classes per semester, not more. This will put them further behind in their schedule, not forward. I understand that UNM wishes more students to graduate and more to graduate on a four-year basis, but this is the exact opposite of a way to help. This is just a scam to increase funds.

UNM pulls this stunt regularly. Just recently, it increased the per-student fee for Athletics to $165.20, giving a $900,000 increase to the program altogether. Athletics is great and all that, and to our student athletes, all the more power to you. But UNM is an academic institution, and the students attending it are coming here to get an education, not sink their hard-earned money into the Athletics Department, which often fails to deliver outside of a handful of sports.

Also, there has been a push since 2011 for more student housing, when UNM is by and large a commuter campus. In March 2011, 23,000 of the school’s 25,000 students lived off-campus, a trend that continues now.

It’s time for UNM students to speak out against UNM’s continued purposeful misunderstanding about the needs of the student body and the ways to help achieve our goals in order to turn us into cash cows.

Amber West
UNM student