Posted on: Friday, February 21, 2003
UH regents raise concerns about $31M in tuition aid
By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer
University of Hawai'i's Board of Regents reacted with astonishment yesterday to news that UH is giving up about $31 million a year in tuition money to a variety of giveback programs, including a generous waiver plan that gives 7,630 students throughout the system a free ride.
Those waivers alone cost the university $17 million a year, according to a report by Doris Ching, vice president for student affairs. An additional $14 million is eaten up by nonresident tuition exemptions.
"We can't afford to be giving away $31 million," said Maui Regent Everett R. Dowling. "That's shocking."
The waivers include 250 specifically targeted for needy students of Native Hawaiian ancestry, as well as others that assist band students, athletes, Pacific Islanders who live in remote areas with no access to higher education and others.
The committee vowed to take a closer look at the waiver program, including debating the possibility of offering $1,000 scholarships instead — a move that could save about $2,300 per student.
The concerns about tuition waivers come at a time when financial aid isn't keeping pace with tuition increases nationwide and when financially strapped states are turning to tuition increases at their state universities to make up budget shortfalls.
A new study by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education notes that state spending for public higher education dropped sharply in the past year while tuition soared.
The situation raises troubling questions about access for those with the most financial need — often racial minorities — particularly with tuition waivers credited with raising minority enrollment considerably at UH in the past decade.
Both Regent Ah Quon McElrath and UH President Evan Dobelle urged creativity and care in looking at the policies because of the need to maintain open access to higher education.
"If we trade on our diversity, it's incumbent upon us to be creative," McElrath said.
The university is in the midst of a major review and overhaul of its waiver program, both in light of budgeting constraints and because of new legal questions under a recent U.S. Supreme Court challenge to the affirmative-action program at the University of Michigan.
The U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights is questioning the UH tuition waiver program for Native Hawaiians, and Amy Agbayani, director of the UH Student Equity, Excellence and Diversity Office, is in discussions over the policy.
Agbayani said if it seems the program is on shaky legal footing based on race guidelines, the university will change the criteria and base those waivers on financial need, not race.
"There are issues of whether this violates U.S. civil rights laws," Agbayani said. "Our congressional delegation hopes that the special political status of Native Hawaiians as indigenous people will be adequate to justify these tuition waivers.
"The university's primary reason for tuition waivers is for access for Hawai'i residents, particularly financially needy ones."
According to Kalawai'a Moore, a specialist with Kua'ana Native Hawaiian Student Development Services in the Office of Student Affairs at Manoa, the waiver program makes a crucial difference for the 110 students who receive them at Manoa.
"If they don't get our aid, they're not going to be here," Moore said. "Without a doubt tuition waivers have a tremendous impact on retention of Hawaiian students in this college."
According to a new report from the UH Institutional Research Office, the number of Native Hawaiian students earning degrees last year compared to a decade ago has risen by almost 50 percent, with the percentage going from 4 percent of the student body in 1992 to 5.7 percent last year.
Among Filipino students the number receiving degrees rose from 3.5 percent of the university population a decade ago to 4.5 percent last year.
The waiver programs have a lot to do with those numbers, according to UH administrators.
Dobelle has asked for cooperation from the Legislative Reference Bureau to undertake a comprehensive study of tuition waivers for Native Hawaiians both to address legal issues and "to address inequities and provide more access for Native Hawaiians" at UH.
Statistics show that while Native Hawaiians represent 27 percent of the students in public schools, they represent only 14 percent of the students at UH.
"The university acknowledges the severe underrepresentation of Native Hawaiian students," said Dobelle, in testimony prepared for the Legislature last week, "and is committed to increase the representation and success of Native Hawaiian students on all campuses."
Unlike the rest of the nation, tuition at UH remains fairly low, despite financial pressures from the state's flagging economy. And while there are no plans to change the 3 percent tuition increase over each of the next three years, anything is possible with everything so uncertain, said Paul Costello, UH vice president for external affairs.
"The revenues are hurting so dramatically you just can't say it will never happen," Costello said. "In an unstable economy and with a war looming on the horizon, you want to be hopeful you don't have to raise tuition, but you don't want to be stupid and say never."
But there was good news yesterday in the midst of the board's meetings.
Regents were told that Gov. Linda Lingle had curtailed, by more than half, her proposed cuts to the UH operating budget, dropping them from $6.9 million annually for each of the next three years to $3.2 million each year.
It still means big trims in services on most of the campuses, said James "Wick" Sloane, UH chief financial officer, but no classes will be curtailed or canceled, he told the regents.
Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8013.
