More than 1,100 students at Columbia University in New York City are refusing to pay tuition until the university lowers the cost by at least 10% as students face another semester of mainly-online classes. Tuition for undergraduates this academic year is $29,460 per semester. In the fall, Columbia allowed fewer than 1,000 of its over 6,000 undergraduates to return to campus. This spring, roughly 1,800 undergraduates will be on campus.
The tuition strike, organized by Columbia’s chapter of Young Democratic Socialists of America via their Twitter account, also includes demands for increased financial aid, for the university to engage in good faith bargaining with campus unions, for defunding the university’s Public Safety and for providing increased economic opportunities and outreach to the neighborhood surrounding Columbia.
Though not all students are able to participate in the tuition strike due to their financial aid situation, Willem Morris, a senior and organizer for Columbia’s YDSA chapter, told The Daily that there are thousands of students who are supporting the strike in other ways. Organizing, emailing administrators and pledging to withhold donations are some of the ways students on campus have gotten involved.
On Jan. 29, Columbia’s YDSA chapter called for a national tuition strike. Howard University’s YDSA chapter announced they were similarly planning a tuition strike for the fall semester. The Columbia strike was inspired in part by the University of Manchester’s rent strike that resulted in a 30% reduction in rent.
The demand for a 10% reduction in tuition is in line with the tuition discount given by many comparable institutions for the 2020-2021 academic year. American University, Georgetown University and Princeton University offered 10% off tuition while Williams College cut tuition by 15%.
Already, the strikers have won some concessions, including increased financial aid payments. Billing statements issued by the university in December said that late fees would be suspended “to minimize the financial hardship” caused or exacerbated by the pandemic. However, some students who did not pay tuition in January were still assessed the $150 fee.
The question of whether tuition rates should reflect the ongoing pandemic is not unique to Columbia. This past spring, some University of Chicago students also held a tuition strike, calling for a 50% reduction in tuition. The University of Illinois was set to increase tuition after an in-state tuition freeze between 2015-2019, but decided to hold off on the increase until the 2021-2022 academic year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Students at the University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus will recall the 1.9% tuition increase for the 2020-2021 school year passed back in June despite student advocacy. At the time, University Regents told The Daily that the increase would only be felt by those who could afford to pay it.
At both Columbia and the University of Michigan, discussions about lowering tuition during a pandemic seem to circle the same main points. Students point out massive endowments that could be used to help them out during a financially precarious time. Administrators sigh and tell students that endowments aren’t just unrestricted rainy-day funds. On and on.
Really though, the pandemic has made it clear that we’re paying too much, always. As Morris said, the “price of higher education is completely detached from the quality of the education.”
That’s not to say that both schools don’t offer high-quality education, but it is to point out that tuition rates are far outpacing inflation. If we were paying the inflation-adjusted tuition rate that a student paid in 2002, an out-of-state student with fewer than 55 credits would be paying $16,617 per semester instead of $25,919. An in-state student would be paying $5,196, instead of $7,760.
Is our education worth more now than it was in 2002? All signs point to no.
Wages for new college graduates are barely rising. CBS reported that between 1989 and 2019, average wages for recent graduates rose less than half of one percent every year. That’s tough to chew on when staring down a 1.9% tuition increase.
The University of Michigan, no doubt, attracts students based on its excellent reputation. But it also recruits students marketing the “college experience” — who among us doesn’t remember being told how many clubs the University offered during admitted student days? Without clubs and game days, it becomes clear that the “college experience” was a way to conceal the bloated tuition. If the college experience was more than that — more than just a shiny object to attract undergraduates — wouldn’t college cost less without it?
This column is not about why and how college is so expensive. There are already plenty of articles about that, such as this piece in The Atlantic.
This column is about one thing that might be done about college tuition, the burden of which is falling on students and on their families. What seems inevitable is that, as long as students will keep paying, tuition will keep rising. It is in that context that a tuition strike seems not only reasonable, but necessary. I’ll be watching closely as Columbia students fight for a fair tuition amount that is one tiny step closer to what their degree is worth and taking notes for the fall.
Jessie Mitchell can be reached at jessiemi@umich.edu.
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