Connecticut State Senate Leaders Bob Duff and Martin Looney sent an open letter on Aug. 27 to President Radenka Maric stating that the University of Connecticut can accommodate 40,000 students, according to The Daily Campus. Senate leaders advocated for this increase because of desires to keep more students and future graduates contributing to the CT state economy and hearing increasingly more stories of students being rejected from UConn overall or on a specific campus. These proposed changes, the letter says, are possible, “while not diminishing the academic quality of the students or diminishing the distinction of the education.”
It is particularly this last statement that rings out as odd considering the current economic state of UConn. The Daily Campus Editorial Board has long written about UConn’s current budget crisis, the likes of which it is no overstatement to say will be devastating to the educational quality of UConn. Yet, it is also important to note the role Connecticut’s state government plays in this problem, with their steep fiscal guardrails and heavy austerity policies actively causing these cuts and preventing UConn from receiving the funding it desperately needs. So, how does it make sense to turn around and request the university to increase its total enrollment by almost 25 percent?
If the state government won’t increase its support for UConn but also wants it to take in 8,000 more students, the only option seems to be to raise tuition. However, the Senate advocates address this worry as well, saying that they would not support a plan which increases tuition for students. As reassuring as this is to hear, it only leads to more questions. Who is actually going to pay for UConn to be able to support all those extra students?
What’s truly scary about this proposal is the fact that UConn administrators are most likely going to take this and run with it. This school has a problem when it comes to expanding too quickly for its own sake, as written before by the Editorial Board. We’re already in a big hole when it comes to money; tuition has been raised by almost 25 percent in the last five years, and all the new buildings going up can’t even fit the students we already have. The idea that now even the state government itself is pushing UConn to be able to expand even faster than it already is, is concerning for the future.
As always, the solution to this problem is through student voice. The Editorial Board urges all UConn community members to let administrators and state officials know that reckless, continuous growth is the ideology of a cancer cell, not a university.