Education is a great concern, said Alfredo de Los Santos at one of the President and Provost’s Diversity lectures yesterday at the union.
De los Santos is not only a research professor at Arizona State University, but is also an adviser to the National Science Foundation Directorate on Education and Human resources. Having wide experience as a researcher, administrator and adviser, he is a seasoned expert on diversity issues in higher education.
According to de los Santos, the deficit for this fiscal year exceeds $17 billion, and higher education funding is the first to go when states are in recession.
“States have limited resources and there are shortfalls, and in addition to taking money from the rainy day fund — and in some states all that money is depleted — doing across the board cuts and laying people off, higher education is the only unprotected part — unprotected by the constitution or by the propositions passed by the citizens,” he said.
To add to the problem, enrollment rates are higher than ever, especially amongst Hispanics, and tuition inevitably will keep increasing, putting a strain on those who don’t have the resources to pay for college.
“Every administrator, every member of the Board of Regents, every board of every institution goes through a heart-wrenching process when they decide to increase tuition — it’s not something done lightly — they do it because that is really the only source of funds they have to sustain the quality of the institution,” he said.
De los Santos said certain communities have established alternate means of higher education to avoid high tuition rates that would be virtually impossible to pay.
“In certain American Indian communities, tribal leadership has started tribal colleges, and the federal government is helping them,” he said.
Frank Hale, who serves as a distinguished representative and consultant out of the president’s office, has been coordinating the President and Provost’s Diversity Lecture Series for the past three years.
Hale related problems facing students to black history month, saying students who don’t have the resources to pay for tuition may have to look to the past for answers.
“I think as far as the demographics are concerned, in relation to black history month, we have to focus on African-American heroes and heroines who, long before resources were available, made sacrifices and investments in terms of their time. Students who come from limited sources, in terms of economic background, often have to partially work their way through,” he said.
Jonathan Williams, a sophomore in actuarial sciences, attended the lecture and said de los Santos may have pin-pointed the problems but not the answers.
“According to him, it is going to get worse because there will be more students enrolling, and faculty is getting cut, and yet we are still paying higher tuition,” he said. “But I just wish he would have spoke more about solutions to the problems.”
