n In their letter of October 27 (“A message to lawmakers on cuts to financial aid,” page 6), the CAS Forum Executive Board submitted a plea to the federal government not to reduce funds available for student loans, especially in the face of rising tuition. However, what they – and many others – likely do not realize is that the increases in tuition are due, in part, to the increasing amount of money made available for aid by the government. What started as a program to assist students with their tuition payments became a new revenue source for universities to tap: If tuition increases, most students will merely receive the corresponding aid, either in grants or in loans, from the U.S. government.

Many have bemoaned the ever-increasing cost of higher education and many have wondered why tuition has increased so much faster than inflation. I submit that the availability of federal funds is one nontrivial factor in this increase – which means that one way of curtailing the increase is to reduce federal aid. While this will no doubt be unpleasant in the short-term, in the long-term it may force colleges and universities to plan budgets without quite so much subsidy for the seemingly bottomless pockets of the federal government – which, in reality, are our pockets. So the increase in costs of college education has become a tax on all of us – and in this time of economic difficulty, all areas of this country, including the government and higher education, need to tighten their proverbial belts.

If I am wrong in my hypothesis, I invite the administration of Boston University to submit a plot of tuition and expenses over time, and to explain why tuition and expenditures increased so much since federal student aid became available. (While I have no specific numbers for BU, these increases have taken place almost across the board.) I believe that the availability of federal monies contributed to at least some of these increases; I invite the university to argue that I am wrong.

This is not intended as an attack; rather, I seek to prove a point – and I cannot fault Boston University for any of its actions any more than I can fault any other college or university for its actions. Let the intellectual discourse begin …

William Sherwin Graduate student in the Dept. of Physics