TCU’s Board of Trustees has approved a new budget for the 2011-2012 school year, and it looks like they are doing a lot of things right.

The $406.2 million budget allows for increases in student financial aid, opportunities for pay increases for teachers and an increase in the amount of faculty to account for the increase in incoming freshmen.

The increase in faculty will help ensure small class sizes and keep down the student-faculty ratio. Also, the opportunity for pay increases will help ensure that current teachers keep doing their best and are happy to lend their talents to the university.

This interest in ensuring quality employees at TCU will undoubtedly improve the academic atmosphere on campus and ensure the overall respected nature of a degree from TCU.

However, that is not to say everything is good about it. Although an increase in student financial aid is nice, and much needed, their reasoning behind it seems flawed. They state that the 8 percent increase in financial aid is to balance out the 8 percent increase in tuition.

That math simply doesn’t work.

It is a noble gesture to give out more money to incoming students and to students who are currently on financial aid packages, but this leaves students who are not currently on financial aid and who are not on full scholarship paying more. It seems that they are leaving a vast majority of current students to just sit back and deal with having to pay more and more every year.

Multimedia editor Matt Coffelt for the editorial board.