The Travails of Higher Education Funding

While the name of the institution will remain nameless I will be spending some time over the next week or so deliberating on technology fee allocations. It is, to tell the truth, an illuminating process that exposes the current problems in public higher education.

As you've probably noticed private sector education pricing goes up regulalry in response to inflation and other pressures. My Ivy League graduate school has gone from $550 a credit in 1997 to $825 a credit by 2002, which is by any estimation quite a leap. Public education however operates according to political dictates, meaning that tuition is not an economic but a political question, as is the ongoing non-tuition funding that colleges get from the State. States have cut their contribution to schools while at the same time holding the line on tuition. Politicians also like to add services without paying for them too. Flat revenue actually means declining revenue as inflation erodes the value of a given dollar every year. Keep in mind that you could buy an egg breakfast for $1, a subway token or a slice of pizza for .75 cents and a nice house for $50,000 in 1978. The dollar isn't a dollar now compared to the 1978 edition. It is really something like a Quarter, but that doesn't mean revenue has kept pace in state allocations or tuitition increases. Inflation now runs something like 2% a year, so your revenue devalues by that amount each year. Still, since the legislatures have politicized the question of tuition charges they cannot be raised in response. No assemblyman or state senator wants to go on record that they increased tuition.

So what to do? In most states there in a stealth increase in revenue to offset inflationary erosion in the form of fees for everything from transcripts to student activities. Fees generate needed revenue and are in fact stealth tuition supplements. Here we have a technology fee that brings in needed revenue and supports things the college didn't even think about a decade ago, like Internet access. The problem of course is that most people don't get it. They see it as "new" money for new things. They also think that it is a great deal of money, which it most certainly is not. It isn't enough to buy every student a Palm Pilot and it barely offsets the ground we have lost due to inadequate state support, eroding tuition revenue and evolving technology needs. It is very distressing and unpleasant to deliberate over all this because in the end we are something like cannibals.