UConn in need of major change

Free tuition at the University of Connecticut for students from poor families is a wonderful idea. It’s going back to the future, since 50 years ago tuition at the university was negligible for state residents and the bulk of student expense was for room and board.

It was cheaper still for commuting students, who paid for books and gasoline and not much else.

Back then UConn graduates easily could enter adulthood debtfree, and for those who took their classes somewhat seriously, this was a gift that endured for a lifetime.

Today annual instate tuition at UConn is $14,000 and room, board and other fees are another $16,000 — more than $30,000 to attend a state school. Of course financial aid, scholarships and loans are already available to the poorest students, and most of them already avoid most tuition charges. Even so, the number of college graduates and dropouts going into adulthood with college loan debt they will not be able to repay for a decade or more is an indication that higher education is grossly overpriced.

It is one thing to proclaim the goal of eliminating tuition for poor students, as UConn’s new president, Thomas Katsouleas, did the other day. It’s another to detail how to do it and put it in the context of a public university with obligations to mesh with the rest of state government policy. The grand gesture is empty and even arrogant without details, which was the point of the complaint made about Katsouleas by the state Senate’s Republican leader, Len Fasano.

After all, Fasano noted, UConn recently obtained more money from the General Assembly and the governor after asserting that it couldn’t afford the rising cost of its employees’ fringe benefits — as if the rest of state government can afford that cost for its own employees. So, Fasano asked, where’s the money for free tuition going to come from, and what about consulting with the legislature? Fasano might have added: What about accounting to the public?

A UConn spokesman replied that eliminating tuition for poor students will cost about $1 million a year and the university won’t cover it by raising fees for other students but will move funds around within its budget. That is, the university that a few months ago was pleading poverty now is confident that it still has at least a million dollars to spare.

That’s typical UConn. While Katsouleas has been in his job only a few weeks, he already seems to have realized that the university long has been the fourth branch of government in Connecticut, independent of the others and largely immune to criticism and ordinary accountability because of the legacies of its championship basketball teams and the refusal of the state’s majority political party, the Democrats, to raise any questions that might discomfort government employees.

As desirable as it may be to relieve poor students of the remainder of their tuition at UConn, it is far more compelling to reduce costs at the university comprehen

sively, for all students and for Connecticut’s overburdened and increasingly restless taxpayers, and to refocus the university on what the state needs most in higher education, actual teaching, not obscure research and political correctness.

A new president at UConn who acts like the last one, an empire builder, will be of help only to the government class.