While tuition hikes this year come with the concession of a 4 percent increase in financial aid, MSU Students United is concerned that merely increasing some financial aid in tandem with recurring tuition hikes is not a sustainable model, and that accessibility will continue to decrease.

School-provided financial aid may help a little to cover tuition, but our peers are hurting in deeper ways. Students at MSU, as well as across the nation, are forced to take out loans to cover basic necessities.

In a June meeting with MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon and other Board of Trustee members concerning the continuing growing tuition costs, Students United questioned the rising administrative costs that have been taking place over the past nine years.

Administrative salaries have ballooned as privatization settles in, and professors and students are shouldering those increases in the form of pay cuts and tuition hikes, respectively.

MSU spent over thirteen million dollars on the salaries of “executive management” in 2013-14, and this number does not even include the ballooning of lower-level bureaucrats who have been rapidly increasing in number as well. President Simon, who continues to make over $500,000 a year and is the 32nd highest paid public university president in the U.S., stated that most of the expansion of administrative costs is due to the growth of academic programs, such as medicine and business.

In the same breath, Simon added that the increase in medical school positions were not funded by an increase in the rate of tuition but by the tuition of more students in medical school, specifically.

Here, we can see that funds are available where Trustees and high executives see fit; yet, not where students seem to need them the most. While Simon deems tuition hikes “necessary,” her version of necessity does not fit into the interest of the majority of the student population.

During times of financial hardship, the university did almost nothing to help the student population maintain affordable education, which would have directly helped the state that they claim to serve. Instead, when faced with difficult times, they shifted the burden onto the shoulders of their students, an easy, shrewd, compassionless choice.

This was especially apparent last spring when Board of Trustees member Joel Ferguson laughed at the idea of student activists confronting the administration about rising tuition costs and other issues on campus. The focus of MSU seems to have always been, and continues to be, its bottom line, and never the student population or their needs. It is clear to Students United that there are too many grey areas surrounding the discourse of student tuition and debt at our university. We will continue campaigning for transparent and democratic budgetary decisions and a more accessible and affordable education until MSU does truly serve students’ needs.