At the risk of repeating myself, let me repeat myself… College tuitions are out of control. Attending a four-year public college or university in Virginia this year will set you back about $452 more in tuition and mandatory fees on average than last year, according to new figures released by the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia.
The jump in tuition and mandatory fees is equivalent to an increase of 6.8 percent, reports Gary Robertson with the Times-Dispatch. That represented a moderation from the previous year’s 9.2 percent hike, but it still beats the 2.7-percent inflation rate by more than 4.0 percentage points.
How much is enough? At what point will Virginia’s colleges and universities acknowledge that they’ve made up for financial hardships imposed upon them years ago by the General Assembly and start restraining their tuition increases? At what point will the dramatic productivity gains of the profit-driven private sector — yes, even in the labor-intensive services sector — be seen in the not-for-profit, academic sector? Universities are loaded to the gills with really smart people, right? Virginia has some of the best business schools in the country, right? Why can’t they figure out how to bolster productivity and restrain tuition charges?
(Obligatory disclaimer: Yes, I know Virginia’s public colleges provide more educational bang for the buck than most of their peers. But the fact that higher education generally is totally out of control is not a sufficient excuse for Virginia instituations being only moderately out of control.)
It strikes me as no mere coincidence that the most inflation-prone sectors of the “private” economy are those that are most affected by the heavy hand of government: education, health care and housing.
