Posted on: Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Tuition increase 'scary' for some

By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer

As the University of Hawai'i considers doubling tuition over the next five years, students worry that a companion plan to revamp financial aid might not be enough to keep them in school.

Jesse Jones, a 21-year-old Native Hawaiian student with two years left before he graduates, is uncertain whether the promises of more aid will be kept and said his family can't afford to help him.

"To me, it's personally really scary," said Jones, who depends on a need-based waiver that covers his tuition, $900 a semester from a Kamehameha Schools scholarship and $2,000 from a federal Pell grant for low-income students. And he still has to work 10 hours a week to afford food.

He pays his own expenses, including health insurance, car insurance and cable TV, shares a cramped one-bedroom apartment with a friend, and considers a movie once a month a big outing.

"I work a little but rely completely on financial aid. It may be there next year, but what about the next? And then how do I finish my education?"

Jones' concerns are echoed by opponents of the tuition increase, who say they wonder if the aid plan will be sufficient to avoid leaving the university's most vulnerable students behind.

Aid would quadruple

Interim UH President David McClain has promised that need-based financial aid will quadruple, going from $4.8 million now to $20.7 million by 2010-11, the final year of a proposed tuition increase that would see the cost of a year of resident undergraduate study at UH-Manoa double.

"We need to spend twice as much just to take care of those currently receiving financial aid because the price will go up for them," McClain said.

"But because the price is going up, there will be some people that were able to afford us who will now have some problem. So we're doubling it again to take care of that group at risk of being priced out."

Ku'umea'aloha Gomes, director of the university's Kua'ana Native Hawaiian Student Development Services office, said a corresponding increase in fees could be the breaking point for many.

"In the School of Nursing, the fees are currently $500 a semester, going up to $1,000 a semester (under the proposed increase), so that's going to impact students from the lowest economic communities," said Gomes, whose office handles tuition waivers for low-income Native Hawaiian students.

"As well, there's going to be a new technology fee that's $10 per credit, so they're going to feel it, and we don't know how much their outside scholarships are going to cover."

Almost 85 percent of Native Hawaiian students receive some kind of financial aid at UH, Gomes said. Some of that is from federal money, but funding for Pell grants — which helps about 14 percent of Hawai'i students with need — is uncertain because of cutbacks proposed by President Bush.

"I'm scared for the ones coming in," Gomes said. "Are the Hawaiian students going to stay in school or are they even going to want to be in school here? Students are trying to figure out what does it all mean in terms of will they be able to handle it."

Even at the less-expensive community colleges — with a corresponding lower tuition increase proposed — students worry.

Pushing the limits

Jenn Boneza, a 30-year-old mother of two trying to get a degree in journalism at Windward Community College, lives on a razor's edge. Even a small increase in hours at her job at Oceanic could push her just over the income limits specified under financial aid.

"If I don't qualify for financial aid, I don't know how I'm going to pay for the tuition increase," said Boneza, who has a 2-year-old and 7-month-old. "It won't affect me this year, but for my last year when I'm going to graduate, it will. I'm going to have to find $4,000 somewhere.

"I understand we have one of the cheapest places in the nation to go to school, but why do the locals have to pay for it? Why don't they raise the out-of-state tuition even more? At so many places on the Mainland, it's outrageous what they have to pay for out-of-state."

Opponents of the proposed tuition increase worry that the higher costs will still drive minority students out of the state's higher education system.

"I'm not sure the kind of funding they're proposing is going to be adequate," said Jon Okamura, associate professor of ethnic studies, who says minority students are being priced out.

"The university uses the same strategy the state uses when faced with financial crisis," he said. "They bring in more transient outsiders. It's a temporary solution and only worsens the under-representation of minority students at the university."

In a public hearing this month regarding the proposed tuition increase, Okamura said a big tuition hike a decade ago resulted in the loss of many of the most financially vulnerable students, those of Filipino and Native Hawaiian ancestry.

"In the fall of 1996 and 1997, recall the impact — a decrease of 5,000 students in the system," Okamura said.

But Linda Johnsrud, interim vice president for academic planning and policy, said the tuition increase in the mid-1990s didn't include increases in financial aid, which she expects will make the difference this time.

"We're hoping to cover more students," she said, "and hopefully, more of the need."

Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8013.

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