How to cut a budget

The IU board of trustees announced a probable tuition rate hike more than the expected 4.9 percent. To be blunt, that really sucks for all returning students, but we can't blame the trustees. \nWhen a university with a long history receives a little more than one-fortieth of the expected appropriation for maintenance, there's not much else to do. IU is not alone. Federal financial aid funding is facing cuts again by $14.5 billion, and state funding across the country is decreasing alarmingly. Compared to other Big Ten schools, we're lucky tuition rates aren't rising at a greater rate.\nI imagine this is what a speech in one of the multiple budget-cutting legislative sessions sounds like:\n"Ladies and gentlemen: Let me tell you folks, I can see nothing wrong with the proposed tuition rate hikes. Cutting funding for higher education will do wonders for the future economy. \n"Students will finally have to work long hours while they're attending school, so they'll finally learn the value of a dollar. It's about time; look how frivolously they spend hundreds every year on brand new editions of textbooks in subjects that don't change. \n"These cuts will free up tax dollars to go to more pressing issues like building a new stadium, or maybe a second 'Golden Gate Bridge' between Alaska's Gravina Island (population: less than 50) to Ketchikan (population: 8,000). \n"Anyway, it's not really fair to make graduating seniors who paid for their education compete with freeloaders whose education was paid for by the honest kids' tax dollars. So those freeloaders worked harder and got better grades; good intentions shouldn't pay tuition. Only commies get something for nothing.\n"Really, how many people need to go to college? It's no secret that most jobs don't require a college degree. Anyway, they'll probably be happier when they aren't overqualified and underemployed; they might not know it now, but a degree would actually be bad for their psychological health.\n"Maybe more jobs will be outsourced, but that's not completely bad either. Now those darned foreigners can stop moving here to take advantage of our freedoms and overrun our country. Then, more Americans will again be free to pursue their dream jobs in the fast food and janitorial industries.\n"Besides, an uneducated electorate is more likely to keep us in office, and my financial backers would not be happy if we cut the pork and stopped funding their pet projects. \n"Thank you very much."\nAre we going to need something as drastic as another cold war before the government remembers higher education is important? Since 1978, tuition has been rising twice as fast as inflation; plus, we are exponentially less likely to get decent jobs after graduation. We are getting a lot less for our money than our parents did.\nA stagnant economy is no reason to cut funding for higher education, and in fact, is all the more reason to increase it. \nIt's time students and parents alike teach these politicians some empathy: Cut their public funding by voting them all out of office.