The University of Hawaii’s flagship Manoa campus — a land-, sea- and space-grant institution — is recognized for innovative research in such fields as oceanography, astronomy, tropical agriculture, cancer and genetics, linguistics, education, and Pacific Islands and Asian studies.
While UH-Manoa’s efforts are often led by top-notch professors, its research-related productivity, impact and excellence also hinge heavily on the contributions of graduate-level students. It’s concerning, then, that over most of the past decade, the overall headcount of grad students has steadily slipped each year.
Excluding students in the university’s professional schools, grad student enrollment declined by 11% for residents and by a whopping 19% for nonresidents over a five-year period, ending in fall 2018. At that time, grad students at UH-Manoa totaled just over 4,740.
There’s no doubt that affordability is partly to blame. Grad school tuition and fees for 2019-20 add up to an average of $16,820 for in-state students, and nearly $38,300 for out-of-state students. UH administrators say both are “far above” those at peer institutions, and want the UH Board of Regents to reduce the rates.
In January, the regents turned down a proposal to trim graduate tuition and keep undergraduate tuition flat. A new plan, which goes before regents today, would lower graduate tuition at UH-Manoa by 2% for residents and 10% for nonresidents in 2020-21, then freeze those rates until 2023.
Also, the plan calls for freezing undergraduate tuition at all 10 UH system campuses for three years. While in-state undergraduate tuition is held up as a relative bargain — nearly $3,000 less than the national average for public universities — the high cost of living here can be a heavy counterweight.
Student debt in the U.S. now exceeds $1.5 trillion, with much of it accumulated in the past decade, as state legislatures — here and across the mainland — have often held static or decreased the flow of public money for higher education.
Still, any call to decrease tuition prompts questions about how the UH intends to guard against a drop in quality of services and research-related opportunities. Students comparison-shopping for the best value for their investment of money and time in academia — along with residents benefiting from the presence of a healthy higher ed system — will want answers.
Baby boomers took UH-Manoa enrollment to its highest-ever point — upwards of 22,300 students in the early 1970s. Currently, there’s a push to hit a total headcount of 20,000, as the campus has fallen short of that since fall 2014.
While last fall’s enrollment (17,710 students) barely increased from 2017 — the campus welcomed its largest-ever freshman class. Also promising is that this spring, UH-Manoa received a record-breaking jump in undergrad applications.
A tapping of the brakes on tuition, while maintaining quality, could spur recovery from recent slips in enrollment. To sustain gains, though, UH leaders must continue to assess whether degree programs and related research pursuits are serving as springboards to careers that meet the demands of ever-
evolving economies — in Hawaii and elsewhere.
STEM-focused degrees (science-technology-engineering-math), for example, are among the most in-demand in the system. Among the university’s encouraging future-glimpsing efforts is its new Academy for Creative Media on the UH-West Oahu campus, which is aims to serve as a hub for launching tech-centered creative economy careers.
The Board of Regents, which oversees policy and management of the system, should give its approval to a UH tuition plan that deftly balances enrollment and cost-of-attendance challenges as well as established student and community services.
