

Why Does Tuition Go Up? Because Taxpayer Support Goes Down - _delirium
http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Does-Tuition-Go-Up-/131372/

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carsongross
It's ridiculous to try pin down one thing as the reason that tuition is going
up. However, it is just as ridiculous to completely dismiss financing (both
public and private) as a primary driver of tuition costs: always and
everywhere we see a bubble (and prices increasing at 5x GDP for decades _is_ a
bubble) we also see debt-based financing.

Sometimes this is due to a predatory private sector, sometimes it is due to a
benighted and nominally-well intentioned public sector. Typically it involves
both, with baser true motives in the public sector. Why let either of them off
the hook? Just to remain comfortably ensconced in our ideological womb?

And NB: the author works as a professor at a public university, so Upton
Sinclair's dictum is in play.

~~~
_delirium
I agree financing can be a factor, and is probably the driving one for private
universities. But the fact that tuition at public universities has been
increasing at a rate _very_ close to the rate at which state funding has been
decreasing is at least pretty suggestive that it's a compensatory increase---
lower per-student state funding being replaced almost $1-for-$1 by higher per-
student fees. For example, the UC system has had its per-student funding over
the past 20 years cut by a little over $10k, and has raised per-student
tuition by just about the same amount.

------
peapicker
Imagine, taxpayer 'support' went down when a major recession hit (i.e., less
taxes were collected). Government funding (for just about everything) is
supposed to shrink when there are fewer tax dollars to pay for things.

~~~
_delirium
The last point is pretty contrary to most macroeconomic theory (from a pretty
wide range of political perspectives that otherwise disagree). Pro-cyclical
fiscal policy is a pretty bad idea; increasing government spending during
booming economies and decreasing it during recessions is just about the exact
opposite of what you want to be doing (but is indeed what most states tend to
do, because politicians are short-sighted). Even if you don't believe in
strong _counter_ -cyclical fiscal policy, at least a flat fiscal policy is
preferable to an actively pro-cyclical one.

In any case, taxpayer funding for higher education has been shrinking since
prior to the 2008 crisis. In the UC system, for example, the per-student state
subsidy amounted to the following, inflation-adjusted:

    
    
       1985: $30,000
       1990: $28,000
       1995: $22,000
       2000: $28,000
       2005: $19,000
       2010: $17,000
    

That at least suggests why there might be a ~$10k tuition increase over the
same period.

