On Thursday, students and faculty will stage a walkout at Indiana University (IU) to protest a range of institutional problems, including rapidly increasing tuition rates at the public university. Like many universities, tuition and fees have increased sharply, rising 45 percent in the past six years, contributing to the more than $1 trillion that 37 million students collectively owe across the United States.
The planned protest will occur as the Board of Trustees holds its annual meeting. Many students and staff are expected to walk out of class and off the job to signal their discontent with institutional policies.
In a release, organizers stated, “The goal is to contest the administration’s efforts to make IU a more exclusive, costly institution, at the expense of students and staff. We have already forced the administration to acknowledge these issues, but through collective action, we want to push further so that we can imagine together a different future for IU.”
One highlighted issue is the tendency for public university systems to focus the majority of funding on the main, “flagship campus” by diverting funds from other satellite campuses that serve thousands of students. While IU’s official flagship campus is located in Bloomington, the system features another large “core campus” near Purdue University in Indianapolis. And although most of IU’s 110,000 students attend one of those two campuses, the public university also administers nine other campuses and extensions across the state.
“The problem with state-run universities is that they always establish the landmark campus and there is the question of what you do with other communities,” said Dr. Susan Erickson, a former professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) to Mint Press News.
Although other public university systems have suffered from similar problems in recent years, the initial planning of similar state universities attempted to be more equitable in the distribution of funds, something Erickson alleges the IU system failed to do from the start. “For example the University of California started in Berkeley. They opened a campus in Los Angeles and were wise enough to realize that it was going to become a major research university on its own. That is what IUPUI didn’t recognize,” Erickson said.
When services are cut and tuition increases, the burden is rarely spread equally. “We get the fee raises, the pay cuts and the cuts in services,” said Erickson, who taught at IUPUI from 1994-2007. This apparent preference of some campuses over others is one of the many grievances voiced by student activists.
In addition to a 45 percent increase in tuition and fees over the past six years, the strikers cite issues of diversity and racism. Students contend that recent cuts at IU have disproportionately targeted international students and students of color. In an effort to reverse that trend, students and faculty have demanded that Indiana University double its African-American enrollment to 8 percent and end policies that prevent undocumented immigrants from receiving in-state tuition.
The central gripe remains student debt, a problem that has affected millions of students across the U.S. Last year, student debt shared by 37 million U.S. citizens surpassed $1 trillion.
This represents the biggest single debt held by Americans aside from mortgages, eclipsing both auto loans and credit card debt. Student debt continues to grow as tuition hikes continue to outpace inflation.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average cost of tuition, room and board at a four-year college or university in 2012 was $32,617. The average cost of yearly tuition at a public institution rose an average of 4.8 percent in 2012 to $8,655.
“I am a person who has been protesting since I was 14. The first time I walked out of school was to protest the bombing of Cambodia and the Kent State killings. It does make a statement,” said Erickson. “The demands are fair — they are not dusting things up. I really hope the campus reacts appropriately.”