A tuition raise
will raise SUU

News of a proposed 23.5 percent tuition increase may frighten starving college students, but we support the increase because it will serve students’ long-term interests.
The additional funding from this increase will go toward things we think SUU has needed for some time, and could actually save future students money. The increase will serve student advisement, faculty retention, and student retention and recruitment.
In the past, we have criticized SUU for having the most credits per student in order to graduate and not effectively communicating its graduation requirements to students.
Part of next year’s tuition increase will fund full-time advisers for the four colleges that do not currently have one. This of the utmost importance to students and is well worth the additional cost of tuition.
We think having advisers who can effectively decipher requirements for majors, general education and degrees at the same time will not only make graduating easier, but also save students money. If students have help mapping out their course load effectively, thereby graduating sooner, they will get their money back and then some.
Along with the advisers, a new software program to track advisement and graduation progress of students will be funded with the increase. This could help clear up the current struggle with mismatching information about requirements and progress toward graduation.
Graduating on schedule will also be made easier by the proposed addition of more required courses taught in the summer. We believe this will allow students more options for scheduling and help relieve some of the stress placed on professors and students with over crowded courses in the spring and fall.
The increase will also fund support to retain and improve our faculty. Nothing is more damaging to a university than being forced to have under-trained faculty or losing good faculty because we don’t reward them enough.
Throughout the string of budget cuts, faculty members have stood by and supported efforts to give students the best education they can get.
We believe it is time we supported our faculty and rewarded them for the job well done. We also support reasonable training programs to improve the quality of faculty teaching. The more training our faculty members receive, the better education we get.
Getting and keeping high-quality students at SUU is just as

 

important as having top-notch faculty and staff. Students are the backbone of any quality university. High-quality students with motivation to improve SUU can bring a lot of fresh ideas to clubs, classes and organizations. The brighter, more motivated and more diverse our student body is, the better SUU will be.
One way the administration plans to increase the enrollment of quality students is to increase the public awareness of SUU and what it has to offer. Some of the tuition increase will be given to marketing for this purpose. We support this move. If SUU wants to be on the map, it had better put itself there. We agree with President Bennion that not enough people in Utah are aware of the great things SUU has to offer.
A price increase is never good news at first, but we believe the increase in the quality of SUU is well worth the money. This increase will help to ensure that SUU students are graduating on schedule with the best programs, faculty and student body the university can offer.
These improvements will not only help students for the duration of their college years, but throughout life. Improving the university means increasing the value of our degrees to future employers and increasing the value of our education in general. We believe a degree from a university known for giving quality education is well worth an extra $180 a semester.
The opinion expressed above is the collective perspective of the University Journal and its editorial board. The editorial board meets every Monday at 1 p.m. in Room 172 of the Sharwan Smith Center. Visitors are welcome.