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Proposed bill threatens quality of education with tuition cuts

By Rachel Zetwick, For The Miami Student

The Ohio Senate has recently been introduced to Senate Bill 4, which will require all Ohio state institutions to reduce the cost of attendance for in-state students by 5 percent for the 2016-2017 school year.

Republican and Senate President Keith Faber asked the Senate Finance Committee to help him achieve this goal. The bill was introduced to Congress Monday, Feb. 2, 2015. Faber is the senator from District 12, and has served as a congressman for Western Ohio for the past decade. He recently expressed his intent to move the legislation to the desk of the governor. Faber serves on the Rules and Reference Senate Committee, and hopes each institution will find creative ways to handle the reduction.

Kirsten Fowler, a Miami sophomore studying diplomacy and global politics, spent time over spring break with the Government Relations Network (GRN) in Washington, D.C. and the Statehouse in Columbus. The GRN is a Miami organization that helps students explore federal, state and local political problems. They traveled to meet and lobby more than 110 legislators and staff regarding Ohio higher education issues, including Senate Bill 4.

While this bill is far from becoming actual legislation, it would entail state universities to cut the cost to attend their institution by 5 percent.

"The catch is that Miami will not necessarily get that money back from state funding," Fowler said.

Fowler explained that the system Ohio uses to supply state public universities with funds is a complicated. Each university receives different amounts of money from the state, depending on how many students graduate from the school, rather than how many students are recruited.

While at the Statehouse, the students of GRN stressed their current quality of education and the possible program reductions that could be made if institutions were required to make reductions to in-state cost of attendance. While no specific programs were mentioned, Fowler implied certain cuts would have to be made if this legislation were to pass. The GRN was not in support of this legislation.

"The problem with Senate Bill 4 is that it focuses on cutting the cost of education, without thought to what it would do to quality of education," Fowler said.

David Creamer, the vice president for Finance and Business Services at Miami said students should be aware that the legislation proposes to reduce the cost of attendance, meaning different institutions will handle a reduction in different ways, such as program cuts or course requirements.

"As a student, you have to recognize that if 5 percent less is being spent, something associated with that 5 percent will go away," said Creamer.

He emphasized that the state of California has recently gone through similar budget cuts as those proposed in Ohio. Although the reduction in cost to attend may have seemed a positive change to California residents, students were quickly impacted by a problem with course availability and, because of that, many were unable to graduate in four years.

If this legislation were to pass, Miami and other state institutions would have to make cuts. When asked how students would be affected, Creamer emphasized that serious deliberation would be necessary to decide which specific areas of Miami would be affected.

"If we have to eliminate something, we want to eliminate something that has the least [negative] impact on students," Creamer expressed.

Fowler mentioned Miami has received the title as the most efficient university in the country, while still providing quality education to its students.

Since the 2008 recession, the university has made a reduction of waste in the budget, also known as the LEAN process. In those projects, Miami tried to make cuts that would not significantly affect either students or faculty.

However, Senate Bill 4 still threatens the quality of education and services offered at Miami. Because it is still far from becoming actual legislation, though, it is difficult to estimate exactly how it would impact the university.

"More state support for higher education is definitely needed, but requiring universities to cut costs without helping to replace that funding isn't conductive to that aim and would end up hurting the Miami student experience," Fowler said.