Gregoire's Tuition Hike Plan to Saddle Students With Greater Debt

"[uw quad]" by Seattlest Flickr pool contributor lempel_ziv.

Last week, Seattlest editor-in-chief MvB set off a healthy discussion of the impacts of the governor's proposed 28% tuition rate hike. Today, the good folk over at Publicola take up the debate, linking to a nice piece from the Washington Policy Institute [PDF] on the "high-tuition/high-aid" model. The idea is that by transferring the cost from the state (through funding) to the students, the university in the process increases aid disbursement, and by developing financial aid programs actually benefits low-income students, who wind up with more access to financial aid. Unfortunately, it turns out that's largely b.s.

As we argued in the comment thread last week, the main form of financial aid in the U.S. are student loans. As the WPC report states: "All evidence from universities already using the 'high-tuition/high-aid' model shows the problem continues to grow. At the University of Michigan, average indebtedness upon graduation is $25,586, nearly $10,000 more than what University of Washington students now leave with."

This on top of the fact that up to 20% of UW students are already low-income, and will now be saddled with even higher levels of debt. As we've long felt, education is one of the areas where George W. Bush's "ownership society" really took root. No Child Left Behind accelerated orienting primary- and secondary-schools towards test-prep, which accomplishes little besides preparing students for college, which the students have to borrow to afford, saddling them with depressing high levels of debt upon entering the workforce. So thanks, Gov. Gregoire--this is just another example of the state Dems' complete lack of leadership and forward-thinking policy, more akin to the dark days of W.'s administration than Obama's era of change. (Obama, at least, is currently fighting to save billions of dollars a year by ending federal subsidies of private student aid lending, in effort to create new funds for Pell Grants. Let's hope he's successful.)

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By Jeremy in News on April 13, 2009 3:00 PM

Comments [rss]

Troy Morris

There is a point on Human Capital-- but to disable the lowest 20% of the population from reasonably obtaining higher education is a throw back to pre-Napoleon dark ages of education, where public education was non-existent because the poor and women need not read, lest they question the men in robes.

Education should be cheap as free, especially for those least able to purchase it for themselves. Period. High-tuition, high-aid models do not provide this cornerstone goal of successful civilization.

Yes, that goes for higher education. Especially with the emphasis on education becoming more and more wide spread. A H.S. Diploma or GED no longer cuts it if you want to make more than 25% more than the minimum wage.

BigGreenFrank

This was brought up last week too I think, but let's not not treat "Student Loan Debt" in the same fearful way we now look at "Mortgage Debt" or "Credit Card Debt".

When you pay for an education, you are immediately and irrevocable increasing your human capital. Your human value cannot decrease like your house's can. This is debt for an unequivocally good investment. It's as close to "free money" as you will ever find.

And as "BMessina" points out, the fact that this raises UW tuition to what other very good state schools (Michigan) offer seems about right when the budget is as tight as it is now.

bmessina

I can't say I agree with the conclusion to this article. From what I've experienced over the last 8 years living in this state, it's felt more like we've been living in a bubble. You pointed out that UW is already a pretty reasonably priced state school. To raise the rates and bring it more in line with other schools isn't exactly failing a generation of students.

Attendance will probably go down a bit, but provided all else goes well (read: the economy), I doubt it will be significant.

Who knew, Seattlest has a conservative contributor.

Jeremy

I'm not sure how to respond to this...so I'm conservative for opposing transferring more of the cost of higher education from the state to the student (who can only accept it in the form of debt)? Or that I'm conservative for thinking it's a good thing that our education is "reasonably priced" and that perhaps we shouldn't make it less so?