See Thru Edu is a project of the Texas Public Policy Foundation
Thomas K. Lindsay, Ph.D., Editor in Chief and Director, Center for Higher Education, Texas Public Policy Foundation
Will the state-funding-cuts myth continue to carry the day, simultaneously browbeating allegedly “stingy” state legislators and hornswoggling the cash-strapped taxpayers these legislators represent?
The academics may assert that we need more anthropologists, but nobody else agrees. This is, in fact, a significant problem is higher education. It amounts to a conflict of interest. We have several departments attracting students to their programs, and the post-graduate job market doesn’t correspond.
It is one thing to say that we need a more affordable student-loan program so that people can pay for things like tuition, books, food, basic housing. It should not be so generous that students’ lifestyle in college far exceeds what they’ll be able to afford after graduation.
Federal, state, and local higher education laws seem to multiply by the hour. Schools devote millions of dollars and valuable resources to comply with those rules—many of which confuse and do little to improve student outcomes.
Taxpayers and lawmakers should recognize the problems barreling in their direction from the overlap of the minimum wage and public sector unions. If public sector teacher unions want a higher minimum wage, this can only result in taxpayers paying for such an increase.
Debt and dropout rates are the twin plagues of today’s college students, both in Texas and across the nation. A small nonprofit in Austin has developed what they see as a vaccine for these modern plagues.
The major problem is not the control of the growth of tuition. This is neither the primary barrier to student access to higher education, nor to success once they get there. That primary barrier is student postsecondary readiness.
The federal government has not taken appropriate measures to solve this issue. Texas has responded by developing accessible and affordable degree programs at the state level in order to enable students of low socioeconomic backgrounds to pursue a college degree.
Perry’s challenge was met with a mixture of disbelief and derision. The chairman of the Travis County Democrats called Perry’s idea “preposterous,” adding that “nobody in higher education believes that is even possible.” That was then. But this is now.
While there is likely some truth to the idea that public institutions up their prices to recoup lost state and local revenue, we have good data showing that those schools tend to raise their prices in both flush and flimsy funding times.
