Last
week, the House of Representatives turned back HB 418 by
Rep. Barry Ivey
that would have allowed the state’s four higher education management boards to
set their own tuition, subject to some parameters. Currently, Louisiana is but
one of two states that require legislative input into tuition hikes.
The bill would have limited increases to 10 percent
annually and no more than 20 percent total over four years. Further, it would
have exempted recipients of Taylor Opportunity Program for Scholars awards, meaning
during the course of the award for a student that state taxpayers would not
have to increase their effort to cover any rise in tuition.
Only as a cost-saving move for the public would that provision make much sense, because otherwise it’s entirely arbitrary: why should award recipients, who pay basically no money towards tuition anyway, deserve a break worth nothing to them compared to others taking the same courses? Still, even with this oddity, the bill had more merits than demerits simply because it gave colleges and universities greater control over use of their finances to achieve public purposes.
But it faced a rout on the House floor, losing 16-75,
with the distinction between TOPS recipients and others apparently a major sticking
point. This ended up worse
than two years ago, when Ivey tried with HB 439 that
lost out only 31-59.
(Because it would represent a fee hike, two-thirds majorities would have to
have passed each version.)
Perhaps the difference between now and then was in
the interim state voters unwisely rejected a constitutional amendment that
simply gave tuition-setting power to the boards without limits. But, as Ivey
pointed out in debate, his more tightly-woven bill gave systems less discretion,
in the hopes that this would dissuade representatives who saw the failed
amendment as a referendum by the people on the issue regardless of the form of
control given to higher education.
Regardless, if one could claim jacking up tuition
on non-recipients as discriminatory, it didn’t make for a very good case. For
those coming right out of high school, bluntly stated one has to do little more
than fog a mirror to qualify for TOPS, with such subpar standards, so
performing that poorly perhaps should earn someone a penalty in tuition costs relative
to award recipients. That argument wouldn’t necessarily hold against nontraditional
students, and it’s possible that schools could raise tuition higher than they
would with a smaller pool to draw upon, meaning some students just as capable
as others end up paying for both, in essence.
Yet even this interpretation is far-fetched, for
two reasons. First, the bill did limit the size of hikes that boards could implement.
And, market pressures do exist, meaning going too high, even if under the bill’s
limits, would price some students out of the market or send them to
alternatives that systems may not want to risk. Considering these factors, the “discrimination”
argument just doesn’t fly.
Plus, it’s not like schools can’t find ways to
increase revenues from students while avoiding legislative interference. At my
university, a typical student on TOPS at 15 hours already
pays over 21 percent out-of-pocket on fees, or about $776 a semester this year.
That’s up from $545 representing the same proportion of tuition for this
semester in 2013,
and $494 or 28 percent this time in 2008.
Schools have complete autonomy of fees, and nothing can keep them from sending that
percentage of fees higher towards the proportion of a decade ago.
So, Louisiana’s lawmakers shoot the state in the
foot again. Instead of bringing some rationality to revenue generation in the
educational marketplace, they keep hamstringing higher education, presumably to
hold themselves out as guardians of sorts keeping educators from exploiting youth.
An under-educated population in part made that way as a result of restrictions
placed upon higher education’s flexibility actually might buy that lame
argument.
No comments:
Post a Comment