An F for effort on holding down tuition
Solving the problem, however, won’t be easy. Americans and their elected leaders have grown used to discussing college “affordability” as a matter of distributing ever more government aid — in the form of tax breaks, direct assistance or subsidized loans.
Actually, this is self-defeating: by making it possible for students to pay higher tuition, federal and state aid reduces institutions’ incentive to make the hard budgetary choices that might hold tuition down in the first place.
Management got so loosey-goosey at Minnesota, the Journal reports, that the school had no idea of such basic facts as how many employees report to each supervisor.
In other words, the ultimate beneficiaries of all those government tuition subsidies are the highly paid administrators and faculty members whose hiring, and retention, it enables.
Blowback
Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.
Trackbacks/Pings
Trackback URL
Comments
Why in the world would any college or university want to hold down tuition costs? Students can borrow any amount of money from government-backed lenders. It’s free money for the university, and they don’t even have to provide a decent education.
RoadRunner on January 2, 2013 at 10:52 PM
For this column, Charles may lose his middle seat as the designated liberal on Brett Baier’s Special Report.
Sad that these facts are not understood by more than half the country. Even sadder is that the phucking GOP can’t explain these facts to anyone. A**wipes.
BuckeyeSam on January 2, 2013 at 11:01 PM
Everything she said.
CorporatePiggy on January 2, 2013 at 11:06 PM
beware the education-government complex.
higher ed is a j o k e.
the institutions are full of degenerates and communists.
tom daschle concerned on January 2, 2013 at 11:47 PM
I blew 560 bucks on textbooks for the four business courses I am taking this coming semester. They use custom editions now- making it all but impossible to buy them over the internet and avoid sales tax ( 7 percent in FL). Plus, buying used ones- is not cost effective as most courses require access codes that are included in the book. They need to reform the textbook market too while they are at it.
aebloo on January 3, 2013 at 12:45 AM
The entire university system is sitting at the brink of economic extermination.
This is comming not from ANY government or related teacher union structures, but by the implementation of technology.
Check out this little college: http://unow.com/.
These guys offer programs at roughly $200 a month. Which means someone living at home, or with a group of friends, and working a crappy part time minimum wage job, can afford to pay as they go!
Is it Harvard? No. Is it likely the equivelant of the majority of the 4500 universities around the country? YES!
This is how the higher education cabal is going to find it’s way to the ash heap of history.
Freddy on January 3, 2013 at 12:55 AM
Don’t forget: any federal aid that is based on a percentage of tuition is pure incentive to the school to raise tuition rates. Make them twice as high as they need to be to earn a profit, and the school is still making good money even when a student is only able to get half the tuition assistance they need. And if a student can get 50% of tuition in aid, then finance the other 50%, it’s pure gravy.
Bottom line: tuition is high because the government pays part of it — with the tax money they took from you in the first place. And then they cite all the aid as proof of how they value education and care about the middle class.
There Goes The Neighborhood on January 3, 2013 at 3:16 AM