In the wake of last week's announcement of a 6.75 percent tuition increase for next year, University administration should be doing more to assist students with financial aid.

Every year incoming freshmen are given a financial aid package that often includes numerous merit and need-based scholarships, grants and loans to help them pay for school. What many don't realize is that, unless their Expected Family Contribution (EFC) or GPA changes significantly in their time at SPU, this is the same package they will be stuck with throughout their time at SPU.

Students' tuition grows by about seven percent each year, but their financial aid usually remains the same. These increased costs have caused some students to transfer to other, less expensive schools.

Ideally, scholarships and aid eligibility should inflate at the same rate as tuition, though we recognize this is not a likely solution to the problem.

This issue "would be very difficult to change overnight, or in a year, without a big tuition increase," ASSP vice president of finance Joel VanderHoek said, explaining that the decrease in revenue for the school would have to be made up in another manner.

This would cause the financial burden to fall on "wealthier" families able to pay more, he said.

VanderHoek said he thinks that SPU expects its undergraduates to take advantage of "a good number" of outside resources, including outside-SPU and department-specific scholarships, which most on-campus departments offer to students accepted into a major.

This is not much help for busier students unable to find the time to compete academically for merit-based scholarships. Rather than force us to compete with our peers, why not rework the budget from the ground up?

According to SPU's recent Accreditation Report prepared by an evaluation committee from the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (available at http://spu.edu/news/president/accreditation-report.pdf), evaluators "found that there are several budget committees [at SPU], but they do not meet together" and that "...only a few people are in on the final stages [of decisions], sometimes with little feedback to the 'lower' planning groups."

We would like to challenge our representatives in ASSP office to continue to make any needed changes and effort that will allow them to hear the opinions and needs of the SPU student body, many of whom have frequent difficulty paying for their education.

We'd also like to see university administration actively seeking student input in the budgeting process.