Hannah Kaase is a freshman majoring in animal and dairy science. She can be contacted at [email protected]. Many of you who are familiar with the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science, either because you are a graduate or know someone who goes there, have heard the bad news. MSMS and its sister in the South, Mississippi School of the Arts, are going to charge tuition next year of $1,000 per year. This news is absolutely tragic. Many of the students who go there now will not be able to return for their senior year, and many of the incoming juniors might not come after all.
This change in the structure of MSMS was announced Thursday. Most people do not yet know why this change has occurred, and the reason is because it was done under the table. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Johnny Stringer added sections 44 through 46 to the end of House Bill 513 in the last 15 minutes of the legislature session before voting occurred. Now the bill sits on Gov. Haley Barbour’s desk awaiting his signature.
Barbour is in a really tough situation with this bill. There are important things in the rest of the bill that must be passed, whether or not he agrees with the tuition being charged. If he does not sign the bill, no school in the state will get funding this year. This pretty much means he has to sign it.
This move is going to be absolutely devastating to MSMS. Even though the bill states that those students on Children’s Health Insurance Program will not have to pay tuition, many students still fall through the cracks. If a student is on CHIP, they cannot be on Medicaid, and vice versa. The bill does not give any exemptions for students on Medicaid or other welfare programs. Also, if a student is eligible for CHIP but is not on it, he or she will still have to pay tuition. Now, I know $1,000 doesn’t seem like a huge burden, but when 60 percent of students in Mississippi are on free or reduced lunch, it’s a big deal.
In 2004, interim director of MSMS Robert Love said in an article, “We didn’t want to see fees that … deter students from trying to enter.”
What has happened to that mentality?
As a graduate of MSMS, I feel a strong sense of obligation to my alma mater. I remember the number of poor students we had when I was there, and I know there would be quite a few missing if they had had to pay tuition. It’s not fair to stop the brightest minds in the state from getting the best education possible. These are people who grow up to work for NASA, win the Nobel Prize, work on Wall Street and more. These kids give back to the state. The majority of them go to school in the state, and even if they leave, they often end up coming back at some point.
The point of MSMS is opportunity. What right does the state have to take away such an amazing chance after giving it so freely in the first place? MSMS director Carol Alderman said in a Commercial Dispatch article on Saturday that many alumni and parents have decided to step up and help pay the tuition of students who cannot afford it. What a blessing they will be.
But if this tuition continues for many more years, it will keep students from applying. The school is already having trouble getting enough students and has been forced to reopen admissions for the last three years in order to get more applicants. Tuition will surely scare many of these students away. We need to tell Gov. Barber that even though the bill must be passed this year, we don’t want to see it come back up. Fellow alum, Willow Nero (class of 2005), wrote a strong article in The Daily Mississippian. Maybe the governor and legislature can consider her suggested alternatives instead of charging poor students money.
Love said in the same 2004 article referred to earlier, “Last year, we graduated 104 students who had about $10 million in scholarships awarded to them. They accepted about $5 million. Think about that level of scholarship. Imagine what a full four-year scholarship to Harvard or MIT is worth. This is a proverbial diamond mine of talent.”
Do we want to bury that diamond mine? The state has many aspiring minds, diamonds in the rough, if you will. It takes a school like MSMS to polish those diamonds and focus their energy so that they really shine for all they are worth.