I didn’t vote in the Student Government elections. This wasn’t because I had forgotten or that I didn’t know anyone running in the election. I lacked the motivation to vote because all of the candidates represented the opposite view I hold over a key issue   tuition.

Education is very valuable, and I think students realize that. However, I make the claim that each year of college is worth less compared to the next year. Each year is more valuable, because the utility of the years increase, meaning a person has less of an incentive to get his or her first year of college education than a junior has of getting his or her last year of college education.

If college students feel they need the latter years of their education more than their previous years, then the college tuition prices should reflect that decrease in elasticity of demand. In case some engineers are unfamiliar with economics classes and don’t understand, this means we should make tuition progressively more expensive as we continue through college. We need progressive tuition.

People hear this and become apprehensive to the thought of increasing prices for our soon-to-be graduates. However, my proposal does not change the total tuition for students. Instead, I would like for us to skew the distribution towards the upperclassmen.

This really helps students with loans. Instead of frontloading our loans and racking up lots of interest payments, I think it would be much more enjoyable for students to begin their large interest payments when they have the opportunity to graduate and make a living. It’s much easier paying on student loans in a job with an engineering firm than in a job with Dunking Donuts.

We should also consider the college dropout. Some students meet unfortunate scenarios where they feel they can’t handle the stress that comes with the college atmosphere. In addition to their predicament, they have to still pay off those loans they have taken. How are they supposed to do that with any ease if they don’t have the upper level education that was supposed to come with those loans? If we have a progressive tuition in place, the burden those unfortunate people have to bear lessens.

Some may try to argue the loss of revenue from dropouts will increase tuition for us. Other factors can balance out this affect. The most important is the increased financial advantage to finishing college earlier than the traditional four year plan.

So, maybe tuition would increase, but we would be paying less; because, we would be more motivated to finish college within three years. Also, the decreased interest payments could negate the possibility of increased total cost on for the students.

So, I explained this to College of Humanities and Social Sciences sophomore Senator-elect Scott Goldsmith.

“I would be interested in opening up the topic to the government in order to decide if the most beneficial plan for students,” was the reaction I got to the progressive tuition plan.

I hope the new members of SG won’t be afraid to take on controversial issues and try new ideas to help students with their financial burdens.

Send your thoughts on progressive tuition to Conrad at [email protected].