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"Unvarnished." (Phi Beta Cons)
"Splendidly splenetic." (Culture Industry)
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(Rate Your Students)
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except that Maureen Dowd is kind of a wrecking ball of a writer,
and Soltan isn't. For the life of me, I can't figure out her
politics, but she's pretty fabulous, so who gives a damn?"
(Tenured Radical)

Monday, August 06, 2007

They've Got a Hungry President to Feed

From an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about fourth-tier Georgia State:


'Joshua Saunders, a third year student at Georgia State University's College of Law, wants to know who raised his tuition 33 percent over last fall.

He's having trouble getting answers.

Saunders, who serves as president of the Student Bar Association at GSU, said he was surprised when he logged into his student account last week and saw his tuition bill would jump from $3,163 to $4,214 this fall.

Saunders said he expected a 15 percent increase to fund a new law school building, a special fee that law school administrators had told students they were requesting from the Board of Regents in October.

But Saunders said he and other students were unprepared for another 18 percent jump in tuition – an increase the Board of Regents approved in May at a meeting that set undergraduate and graduate tuitions system wide.

"It was, quite frankly, a shock," he said.



In an e-mail to students, Kelly Cahill Timmons, the law school's associate dean for student affairs, said the Board of Regents "imposed an across-the-board tuition hike system wide for all graduate students," which resulted in the additional increase.

But John Millsaps, the spokesman for the Board of Regents, said that is not correct.

"The Regents did not approve an across the board system wide tuition hikes for graduate and professional programs. Tuition increases were approved on an institution specific and sometimes program specific basis so that their rates varied among programs," he said.

Graduate school programs at several public colleges jumped in price this year. Instate grad students in UGA's Pharmacy School will be paying 19.7 percent more than they were last year, and master's students in accounting will be paying another 39.2 percent.

Institutions that offer professional programs submit proposals to the university system for tuition increases based on how they stand in the competitive market, said Bill Bowes, the Vice Chancellor for Fiscal Affairs for the 35-institution university system.

"They propose the rates," he said.

Georgia State law student Brian Basinger said graduate students deserve fixed tuition rates, just like their undergraduate counterparts.

Saunders said he and other students want to know where the 33 percent figure came from — their institution or the Regents.

"I don't know which way is up, here," he said.'




UD says cherchez le prez. He's among the very highest paid public university presidents in the country. Although here again there's some confusion about numbers.

In 2005, he was the second highest-paid public university president, at $722,350. He's currently fourth best-paid at $688,406. Did he take a pay cut? Did they calculate things differently because they were embarrassed he came in second?

Anyway, somebody's got to pay the president's salary, and it looks as though this year it's the law school's turn.