LANTERN STAFF

For the second year in a row, Ohio State has enacted a tuition freeze for in-state students. And for the second year in a row, OSU is bumping up charges for out-of-state students.

Last week, the OSU Board of Trustees approved a plan that keeps tuition the same for in-state and graduate students for the 2014-15 academic year and increases the out-of-state surcharge by 5 percent.

For the 2013-14 academic year, in-state tuition was set at $10,010, while out-of-state tuition was $25,726, according to the OSU tuition and fees website. The nonresident tuition surcharge, however, rose 2 percent.

In the meantime, OSU hasn’t forgotten to preach its desire for diversity and its wish to draw in students from all over, which now seems a little hypocritical.

Although OSU highlighted that 21.2 percent of this past year’s freshman class came from other states in its enrollment report, it feels like it’s whispering its affections to Buckeye State residents in the meantime: Don’t worry, we’ll help you out tuition-wise.

The idea comes back to the balance OSU is trying to maintain between being a land-grant institution, serving Ohio’s students, and a flagship one, catering to a global lecture hall.

The university isn’t looking to draw in more out-of-state students than in-state ones, though, as Provost and Executive Vice President Joseph Steinmetz has said. That makes it more understandable that the university would want to keep tuition low and appealing to Ohio students.

“I know of institutions in this country that have more than half of their student body come from out of state. I think that would not be acceptable here at Ohio State because I think we will have abandoned a good part of the land-grant initiative,” Steinmetz said in an April interview with The Lantern.

That’s not what we’re asking for, though. What we’re asking for is to not be treated like out-of-state students and in-state students when it comes to tuition changes, but just as OSU students.

Nonresident tuition will likely always cost more, and that makes sense. But it shouldn’t necessarily always have to increase more.

The staff of The Lantern includes Ohio residents and nonresidents alike, and while a tuition freeze helps many of us, increasing fees for out-of-state students still hurts a lot of us. As OSU moves forward, we hope there can come a time where no one’s tuition has to rise.