In December of 1994, MSU's administration made its community a promise: to keep tuition at or below the rate of inflation.
It was known as the Tuition Guarantee, and it was abandoned in fall 2000.
With next year's budget, MSU seems to be abandoning something else - its responsibility as the nation's pioneer land-grant university to keep higher education for state residents affordable.
MSU announced administrators are handing a budget plan to the MSU Board of Trustees that includes $31 million in budget cuts and $29 million in tuition and fees increases.
That's nearly a 10-percent increase in tuition this fall and a 2-percent increase for next summer for students.
The university should try to make more cuts instead of passing its budget woes onto students. These increases in tuition would be paired with a 6 percent increase in room and board costs, the highest since 1991. Combined, the increases mean paying about $1,000 more a year.
Now it doesn't seem like such a good idea for the university choosing to have hot tubs in Shaw Hall's bathrooms when they were renovated.
MSU administrators need to manage their money better.
It's good the university increased financial aid by $3.4 million, also about a 10 percent increase. But with tuition increases like these, some students will no longer be able to afford an MSU education.
Faculty members are also feeling the pain of these cuts. While salary increases for professors would be 2 percent under the budget, as opposed to 5 percent increases have been since 1999, the university has already eliminated 140 positions, firing up to 100 people.
More professors mean smaller classes with educators who know what they're talking about and who have the time to attend to the needs of each students.
Fewer professors, even with being paid more money, mean bigger class sizes and the need for teacher assistants, who aren't as qualified, to lead a class.
So the students who can afford to attend MSU, will still be slighted in the quality of their education, and still be jam-packed into lecture halls
But it's not totally the university's fault.
State legislators made 6.5 percent cuts in higher education earlier this year. They also let the per-student appropriations gap between MSU, the University of Michigan and Wayne State University continue.
Had the Legislature thought more about what they were doing, MSU might not be in this particular situation.
The state Capitol needs to realize it's taking millions of dollars away from MSU.
And when the university has to pass those cuts onto incoming students, it takes away something much more important - an affordable education.
