To the editor:

Given the news last Friday about how Kansas University beats all other state schools in its tuition and fees (“Tuition increase tops 2014”), I was shocked to see that the following day’s news contained an article on how KU’s chancellor would receive a 2 percent salary increase (“KU’s top administrators get 2 percent salary raises”). Does it make sense to increase a chancellor’s salary when a school is already struggling with furlough threats and a $2.7 million budget cut from the Brownback administration?

At KU, where students must pay for printing and ID cards, increasing administrators’ salaries only worsens the burden. For an out-of-state freshman in 2014, assuming a 30-credit hour course load over two semesters, tuition alone adds up to nearly $25,000 per school year. Now consider Cornell, an Ivy League that does not require parent contributions for families whose total incomes and assets fall below a certain line. Thus, it costs more for an out-of-state student to attend KU than it does to attend a private school in New York!

KU is confronting a very demanding situation concerning its finances, and this problem is exacerbated by the current Kansas government. If the state doesn’t cooperate, then KU administrators must put their heads together, their self-interests and salaries second, and find sustainable ways to fund the school. KU cannot just rely on the chancellor donating her salary increase, because the root of the problem doesn’t lie in the school, but the state.