2008 Woodie Awards
Editorial: Make URI private?
Issue date: 4/16/08 Section: Editorial/Opinion
04/16/08 - The University of Rhode Island is beginning to see the effects of an expected $12.1 million cut to the school's state appropriation. First we saw the gymnastics team cut, then field hockey, men's tennis and swimming. Now an understaffed and overworked Dining Services is struggling to ensure the food it serves is not expired.
Next year students will face drastic increases in tuition, housing costs will jump 5 percent and the prices of meal plans will rise 3 to 5 percent. Experienced professors will leave under a retirement initiative, and more and more classes will be taught by adjuncts that lack the expertise of tenured professors. In the end, students will be paying more for much, much less.
President Robert L. Carothers told a group of newspaper editors last week that it was time to rethink plans for the university, comments echoed by the new Provost Donald DeHayes. Indeed, it seems the time to reevaluate not only where the university will put its money, but the very core of the institution as a public school.
In 1892, the state founded the university as a land grant institution with a simple mission to educate the state's citizens in the then-booming areas of agriculture and science. More than 100 years later, the graduating class has grown from a mere 17 men to more than 2,500 men and women majoring in fields unheard of just 50 years ago, never mind in 1892. Yet it seems as the number of graduates grow, the interest in funding higher education falls.
A study earlier this year by the Chronicle of Higher Education found every state except Rhode Island increased its contribution to higher education. The school is almost always the first in line for budget cuts and local residents complain endlessly about rowdy URI students.
If the politicians and citizens find the university a drain on tight resources and its students bothersome in Narragansett and Providence, then it should bite the bullet and make URI private.
A private university would be able to raise its tuition to market prices, eliminate majors that serve the public good but are not attractive on a marketing brochure and fire those pesky state workers.
And the state would win, too. Rhode Island could brag of being the only state in the nation without a public university. It could tell states that while they are pouring money down the drain by educating tomorrow's leaders, Rhode Island is doling out long overdue "cost of living" pay increases to high-ranking state officials drawing six-figure salaries.
It's time to fix the University of Rhode Island. It's time to make it private.
Next year students will face drastic increases in tuition, housing costs will jump 5 percent and the prices of meal plans will rise 3 to 5 percent. Experienced professors will leave under a retirement initiative, and more and more classes will be taught by adjuncts that lack the expertise of tenured professors. In the end, students will be paying more for much, much less.
President Robert L. Carothers told a group of newspaper editors last week that it was time to rethink plans for the university, comments echoed by the new Provost Donald DeHayes. Indeed, it seems the time to reevaluate not only where the university will put its money, but the very core of the institution as a public school.
In 1892, the state founded the university as a land grant institution with a simple mission to educate the state's citizens in the then-booming areas of agriculture and science. More than 100 years later, the graduating class has grown from a mere 17 men to more than 2,500 men and women majoring in fields unheard of just 50 years ago, never mind in 1892. Yet it seems as the number of graduates grow, the interest in funding higher education falls.
A study earlier this year by the Chronicle of Higher Education found every state except Rhode Island increased its contribution to higher education. The school is almost always the first in line for budget cuts and local residents complain endlessly about rowdy URI students.
If the politicians and citizens find the university a drain on tight resources and its students bothersome in Narragansett and Providence, then it should bite the bullet and make URI private.
A private university would be able to raise its tuition to market prices, eliminate majors that serve the public good but are not attractive on a marketing brochure and fire those pesky state workers.
And the state would win, too. Rhode Island could brag of being the only state in the nation without a public university. It could tell states that while they are pouring money down the drain by educating tomorrow's leaders, Rhode Island is doling out long overdue "cost of living" pay increases to high-ranking state officials drawing six-figure salaries.
It's time to fix the University of Rhode Island. It's time to make it private.