COMMENTARY
Minorities hurt most by tuition increases
By Jon Okamura
In the commentary "UH tuition is rising; is it worth it?" (Advertiser, May 8), the University of Hawai'i's interim vice president for academic planning and policy asked who benefits from public higher education.
Advertiser library photo
The obvious related question is: Who doesn't benefit because not all ethnic groups have the same opportunity to attend the University of Hawai'i?
As tuition at the University of Hawai'i has risen, enrollment has fallen.
Since UH-Manoa was established nearly 100 years ago, those who haven't benefitted include Native Hawaiians, Filipino Americans, Samoans and other ethnic minorities who have been substantially underrepresented as students.
The tuition increases approved for the UH system will result in considerable enrollment decreases for those underrepresented groups and other state residents. At UH-Manoa, tuition will increase about 15 percent per year from fall 2011 through fall 2010 for resident undergraduate students and thus will nearly double within three years.
Such massive tuition hikes in the UH system last occurred in 1996 and 1997, with UH-Manoa having the greatest increases of 50 percent in 1996 and 23 percent the following year.
I recall that UH administrators claimed that students who couldn't afford the higher tuition at Manoa could begin their education at the community colleges where the increase was much less. However, within three years, enrollment had declined by about 5,000 students throughout the UH system, including the community colleges, from nearly 50,000 students in 1995 to about 45,000 in 1998.
It currently is 47,500 students. At UH-Manoa, enrollment dropped from 19,800 students in 1995 to 17,000 three years later and took several years to recover.
While all ethnic groups in the UH system were negatively impacted by the rise in tuition, it especially hurt socioeconomically disadvantaged minorities, including Filipino Americans and Native Hawaiians, given their lesser financial resources.
Filipino Americans, already represented at UH campuses well below their proportion of Hawai'i public school students (20 percent), experienced a 20 percent drop in their total UH enrollment from about 7,500 students in fall 1995 to a low of 6,000 students in fall 2001. As of fall 2004, there were still more than 1,000 fewer Filipino American students in the UH system than there were in 1995.
At UH-Manoa, Filipino American undergraduate enrollment decreased more than 25 percent from about 1,600 students in fall 1995 to less than 1,200 in fall 2001 when the downward spiral finally ended. Nonetheless, their current numbers are still several hundred fewer than they were 10 years ago.
Native Hawaiian students also experienced enrollment losses in the UH system following the 1996-1997 tuition hikes.
Despite having access to financial assistance provided by the Native Hawaiian Higher Education Act and the Ke Ali'i Pauahi Scholarship Foundation, their enrollment figures have not fully recovered to their 1995 levels. They also continue to be represented substantially below their percentage of public school students (26 percent).
During the 1990s economic malaise in Hawai'i, UH-Manoa attained national distinction as the only public university to undergo seven consecutive years of budget cuts. As a means of dealing with declining funding from the state Legislature, the university began to recruit students from the U.S. continent because of the much higher tuition they pay.
Consequently, the group that has gained the most in enrollment since the late 1990s has been white students, who are currently the largest undergraduate group at both UH-Manoa (22 percent) and UH-Hilo (37 percent). At the former campus, the proportion of white undergraduates has grown from 14 percent in 1995 to 22 percent in fall 2004.
Whites also have recently emerged as the largest group among UH-Manoa first-time freshmen — i.e., students who enter college directly after graduating from high school.
The white proportion of first-time freshmen has tripled from 8.8 percent in fall 1998 to nearly 27 percent last fall. As a result, nonresident students presently constitute more than one-third of incoming freshmen, a huge proportion for a state university.
When I've asked white students from the U.S. continent why they decided to come to Manoa, many of them respond that the lower tuition makes it highly attractive for them. However, by 2010, nonresident tuition will more than double to nearly $22,000 per year, and there is no guarantee that those students will continue to enroll at UH-Manoa at their current rate.
Attracting nonresident students to attend our university because they pay more in tuition is a shortsighted and short-term solution of a much more fundamental problem of adequate funding of public higher education in Hawai'i.
I ask that the UH Board of Regents review its own policy on "Nondiscrimination and Affirmative Action." This policy states that "the University of Hawai'i is an equal opportunity/affirmative action institution and is committed to a policy of nondiscrimination on the bases of race, sex, age, religion, color, ... "
Based on previous experience, higher tuition will drastically reduce minority admission and enrollment throughout the UH system. Thus its approval contradicts the regents' own policy to provide for equality of access to the university for all of Hawai'i's residents.
Jon Okamura is an associate professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at UH-Manoa. He has written on ethnicity and ethnic relations in Hawai'i. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser and it represents his own opinions, not the university's.
