HEADLINE: Trustees approve 6 percent tuition hike for UTC
THE RECAP: University of Tennessee at Chattanooga students will have to pay 6 percent more for tuition this fall after the University of Tennessee system Board of Trustees approved a tuition hike for students at UTC, UT-Knoxville and UT-Martin on Thursday.
For an in-state undergraduate student taking at least 12 credit hours, the annual tuition would increase from $5,722 to $6,065 beginning this fall.
DREW’S VIEW: In 2004, in-state tuition to UTC topped $2,000 for the first time, coming in at $2,047 for two semesters. A decade later, students will pay almost three times that much for pretty much the very same education and experience. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, inflation has increased 23 percent since 2004. Meanwhile, UTC’s tuition has skyrocketed 296 percent during that same time.
It just so happens that 2004 is also the first year of Tennessee’s lottery-funded HOPE Scholarship Program. The HOPE Scholarships allow almost any college-bound high school graduate in Tennessee to have their tuition to an in-state public university funded by dopes who don’t understand math and waste their money on the lottery. It’s no coincidence that tuition costs hit the roof when the lottery scholarships were put in place.