"Tuition Deregulation Is A Mistake"

"Tuition Deregulation Is A Mistake"

Posted by Chris Bell on January 4, 2006 - 8:00am.

Tuition bills for Texas public universities and community colleges come due this week. This isn't news to any of those students or their parents, and neither is this: Tuition deregulation is a miserable failure. Since Rick Perry pushed for and passed a law to transfer the power to set tuition and fees from elected officials to unelected political appointees, Texas public college costs have gone up $653 million. There are a lot of reasons I love that my two boys are nine and eight years old--Little League, school plays, magic lessons--but when I see my friends paying tuition bills that have gone up 50 percent in four years, I thank God that that Alison and I have almost 10 years to save college money.

If you need any proof that Rick Perry has Texas headed off in the wrong direction, read this: According to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, students at Texas public universities have seen tuition and fees jump 61 percent, or $1,841, since the 2001-02 year, and community college students have faced a 52-percent, $513 increase in tuition and fees over the same period. Take average enrollment of 480,386 at universities and 550,713 at community colleges, and multiple that by the increases in tuition and fees, and that's how I get to the price tag of $653 million for tuition deregulation. Try telling the parents of college-aged Texans that Rick Perry didn't increase their taxes.

Higher bills means a higher debt load for Texans when they leave college because state-funded financial aid is not keeping pace. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board reports that at least 54,000 eligible students will not receive a Texas Grant in the next two years because the aid program is underfunded by $200 million. As one consequence of the aid shortfall and tuition deregulation, students now leave Texas public universities with average debts of $21,590, according a recent report.

So what are we going to do about it? Let's put the genie back into the bottle. Tuition deregulation is a mistake, but we can undo the mistake.

As Governor, I will make sure Texas meets its responsibility to make a college education accessible to anyone smart enough to do the work, and the only way to make the politicians meet their responsibilities is to end tuition deregulation. We can't pass a billion-dollar tax increase onto families with college kids and not expect it to hurt our economy.

Every family writing a tuition check today still knows what Rick Perry doesn't get, that an investment in higher education trumps the economic development benefit of a toll road or corporate subsidies for campaign contributors. Every family in this state knows that the next generation will join the New Mainstream when our state government realizes that the law of diminishing returns does not apply to our children.

My New Mainstream message takes its name from the writings of economist Richard Florida who says that companies move jobs in pursuit of educated workers. I think that a thriving higher-education system should open its arms wide for anyone who can do the classwork regardless of their incomes. That's how we achive the American Dream and grow our economy on a mass scale. That's how we fuel and economic growth that can fund the best public school system in the country.

Unfortunately, Rick Perry doesn't get it. According to the Legislative Budget Board, he's spent $215 million in corporate welfare to create a piddling 275 jobs and now he's running for re-election and running TV ads touting his record on job creation. When we're underfunding a financial aid program and leaving 54,000 college students scrambling to find enough money to continue their education, our Governor is not only leading us in the wrong direction, he's doing it at full speed.

http://www.chrisbell.com/blog/010405_tuition_deregulation