MEREDITH RODRIGUEZ
Assistant News Editor
Last year’s budget cuts grouped with falling national rankings and a tuition increase, have left baffled students crying that the only things that seem to be rising as fast as tuition are decorative palm trees and Zoey 101 ratings on the Nickelodeon.
Tuition, increased to an all-time high of $30,770 last year, is forcing the average Pepperdine student into a struggle to make ends meet.
“Ivy League schools don’t even cost that much, and we are not at that caliber,” said senior Rachel Newgard. “What are we paying for – to be the most beautiful campus? That’s what I feel like.”
Administrators, on the other hand, explained the reasoning behind last years’ sharp tuition increase, including long-overdue faculty salary increases. President Andrew K. Benton adds that most student complaints rise from misunderstandings about how Pepperdine funds campus improvements, “which rarely come from tuition revenue,” he wrote this week in an e-mail. While tuition increased 7.47 percent last year, financial aid surpassed it by 8 percent, according to Benton.
Not all students have felt this 8 percent cushion.
Last year, when Seaver announced its planned tuition increase for the 2005-2006 school year, a significant jump from the usual 4 percent, freshman Justin Haight said he did not feel alarmed.
“At first I didn’t think a lot about it,” Haight, now a sophomore, said. “I thought scholarships and stuff would take care of it.”
This summer, reality struck.
While tuition rose $2,139, Haight said he watched his scholarships remain the same.
He worked at a 40-hour-per-week summer job mowing lawns as a custodian at a high school to make up the difference. He also reluctantly took out his first personal loan.
“This year I had to do the Stafford loan, the Perkins and a private one,” he said. “It was a seven- or eight-thousand dollar difference that I had to pay this year.”
Haight, a roommate of a freshman hall residential adviser, admitted he was angry that he was forced to take out a private loan to pay for fees that he assumed he had covered upon entering Pepperdine.
He said he has learned to accept it. He is applying for a job with Public Safety right now.
Other students will not resign as gracefully as Haight. If she must suffer the strain of increased student loans, junior Rozelle Polido said she wants to see academic improvements.
“I would be OK with it, except I don’t see improvements related to my academic growth,” Polido said. “All over, all I see are aesthetic improvements.”
She cited continued renovations in the Sandbar and the HAWC, renovations that she did not ask for.
Polido added that she does not understand why tuition should increase when groups such as Zoey 101, the Battle of the Reality Stars and various summer camps pay the school for its facilities. Polido, who has worked for the Call Center, said she knows that Pepperdine receives funds through outside donations.
Eighty percent of the school’s operating budget comes from tuition, and 20 percent comes from gifts and endowments, according to previous Graphic reports.
“Pepperdine gets money though other ways,” Polido said. “So why should they increase our tuition?”
Polido said that she is still lost in the frustrating process of figuring out her financial-aid package for the year.
“It’s all a mush,” she said. All she said she knows is that her bills are big.
Haight and Polido represent many students at Pepperdine who have to pay for all of their tuition.
“Other people, their parents do everything,” Polido said. “My parents cannot support me.”
Polido is a Filipino native of Hawaii. Her two younger brothers are handicapped, and her parents receive aid from the government. As years passed and times became more difficult, requiring her family further aid, the school gave her less scholarship money instead of more.
“They don’t realize that I don’t see that money (that federal aid gives her family),” she said.
The tuition increase has only magnified already difficult times in Polido’s life, she said, but she said she makes due with a modest Church of Christ scholarship. She also receives a stipend for her job as a Spiritual Life Advisor of freshman hall, Crocker.
“I’m trying to focus on my SLA job,” she said. “It takes a lot of time.”
Junior Trent Allen also said he cannot work too much this year to leave time for his commitment as an SLA. Last year, Allen balanced four jobs and 18 units “just to avoid taking out massive loans,” he said. This year, excessive loans were inevitable.
“It’s hard times, but you learn how to deal with it,” he said. “I remember when my laptop died on me last year, and I wanted to cry because that would have been an additional expense.”
Senior Rachel Newgard, who also wonders where her increased tuition is going, has managed the increase with extra jobs and prudent use of her money.
She has worked for America Reads and as a paid note-taker for the Student Disabilities Office. She also babysits and volunteers as a tutor for Camp Kilpatrick.
“I have gotten extra loans, and I am trying to fill up any free time with jobs,” she said. “I cut back on expenses by not having a car and by renting a room from a professor on campus.”
Last year Seaver Dean David Baird predicted the stress a tuition increase would place on students.
“I told the faculty we’d be getting a raise at the students’ expense … so we need to be better teachers,” Baird said in March to the Graphic.
Though they have strained students, this years’ increased raises have improved faculty morale, according to Benton.
“Students might not see that as readily, but the long-term impact on our program and faculty morale, is significant,” Benton said.
Baird added that the increase was a result of many factors aside from increasing long-deferred faculty raises, including inflation, expansion and improvements.
“The cost of services we provide our students has gone up, and because we are tuition dependent, tuition has to go up,” Baird said in March.
Baird further explained that in past years, Pepperdine had not increased tuition enough to cover its rising expenses. The steep increase was meant to make up for previous minimal tuition increases.
Baird said that if Pepperdine had followed the example of schools such as USC and Stanford and raised tuition slightly more each year, Pepperdine would not have had to increase tuition by such a significant percent last year.
“We lost some ground and it was time to make corrections,” Benton said. “Making those decisions is not easy, but it is necessary.”
09-15-2005
