There was an article in the State Press (ASU’s newspaper) recently about student groups pressuring congressmen to help make college more affordable for everyone. Normally I ignore everything in the State Press except the crossword and the word jumbles, but this one caught my eye because this argument is made quite often. It goes: a college education is getting more and more expensive; therefore, Congress, or state legislatures, must give more money to young people (and of course, taxes must go up).
What puzzles me about these arguments is that there is a very simple alternative to taxing some people to let others go to college: pressure the universities to lower their costs. This changes the transaction from one involving coercion (government forcibly taking money from some and giving it to others) to one of voluntary agreement (the college/university can lower its prices or risk losing students or bad media attention).
The simple reason why student groups would not utilize this method is that a reduction in the price of something necessitates a reduction in the level of service. Rather than lower the quality of the university they are attending, it is more rationale for the student groups to pressure government institutions to spend other people’s money to help still others pay for college.
Just a related event I thought you might find interesting. Long Beach State is one of the most affordable colleges in the country and this year tuition was raised 30% while the faculty received a pay cut of 10%. The result of this pay cut that effects the students are furlough days.
Yeah, but Long Beach isn’t the best example. The entire reason that state colleges and universities were created was to provide a cheaper education for the state’s residents. The way that this is accomplished is by heavily subsidizing the tuition of in-state users. Everyone at CSULB isn’t paying the full cost of their tuition, and now that California is in the red the only way that can continue is to raise taxes or raise tuition. Voters rejected the first, so they are forced to do the second.
Funny how all of the top universities in the country are private, not public.
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-universities-rankings