Editorial: Open the books

As students who value the quality education Pitt provides, we’re naturally irritated when the… As students who value the quality education Pitt provides, we’re naturally irritated when the accessibility of that education comes under fire. Now that both houses of the Pennsylvania General Assembly have passed substantial cuts to Pitt’s funding — and this during an era of increased workplace competition and demand for higher education — we’re irritated.

So irritated, in fact, that you’d think we were about to advocate for extended protests along the Capitol steps in defense of Pitt’s programs. Yes, as the pending 19 percent reduction in Pitt’s state appropriation threatens to drive in-state tuition increases well over 4 percent, the activist urge has certainly pulled on us. But alas, we must stop ourselves, our passions arrested by the deliberate absence of one crucial detail. And Chancellor Mark Nordenberg is to blame.

Pitt refuses to open its books, or at least release the necessary line items.

If it did, we’d know precisely why state appropriation reductions translate to tuition increases, and we’d be able to argue on our University’s behalf, our feet firmly planted in the sands of reason and confidence. That’s because we believe tuition increases are valid if they sustain or expand Pitt’s quality, but with a glaring question mark preventing us from drawing arrows of causation, we can never know.

The folks at The Pitt News are not the only ones interested. In his statements on the State Senate floor yesterday, Pennsylvania Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, R-Montgomery/Bucks, said that he had asked the state-related universities in March for a breakdown of their spending and tuition increase rationales for the last 20 years and that he did not receive it. Even if keeping the details from Greenleaf might have cost Pitt millions in appropriations, we think keeping them from students goes to a different level.

Sure, Pitt’s state-related status allows it to keep mum on its finances (unlike state universities like Slippery Rock). And with pressure like this, you can bet our University will use this caveat as a convenient hiding place. But if there’s ever a time to take the risk of partial disclosure, it’s now — when debt-burdened students around the country are demanding to see how much education their borrowed dollars are buying.

Don’t get us wrong — privacy should be protected, and thus the pressing need is not for the whole budget. But as an institution whose primary interest is supposedly the betterment of its students, Pitt should release, at the very least, those lines that prove the necessity of a future tuition increase and how Harrisburg’s 19 percent funding cut will exacerbate it.