<p>Oh great. Just what I needed to hear:</p>
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"Virginia will need more reliable financing for public universities. One place to look is the practice of “in-state tuition."</p>
<p>Taylor Reveley, president of the College of William and Mary, has *rightly<a href="!">/b</a> suggested ... letting market conditions determine college costs."</p>
<p>State</a> universities need a new model for paying the bills - The Washington Post</p>
<p>So all public Us are now going private? I thought state funding went to public Us?</p>
<p>Not enough to really matter anymore. Could often be replaced by full instate tuition model and more fin aid for poor but worthy instaters. Bonus wouid be getting state pols out of higher ed. Let them continue to muck up K-12.</p>
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<p>Such state funding keeps getting cut. So in-state tuition rises.</p>
<p>What the editorial is advocating is slowly happening anyway.</p>
<p>^^Exactly. </p>
<p>I argued several years ago that UC was just being leaderless by recruiting wealthy OOS’ers. They could do the same by recruiting wealthy instaters (and by raising tuition, part of which would be used to offset financial aid for the poor). Net-net to the University is the same ($). The only difference is that state residents (and taxpaying families) are not displaced.</p>
<p>There is a balance needed. UVa just started charged 3k more a year for the commerce school, because there is so much demand for the seats. Pitt and Penn State charge more for nursing than other majors because they say there are higher costs to the universities (and also high demand for those seats). </p>
<p>I’ve heard students argue that majors such as social work should have lower tuition, because they will have lower salaries.</p>
<p>The state of Georgia, I read, had offered large merit scholarships to top in-state students to attend public universities. They cut back on it- partly because they realized the net effect was to make it easier for affluent students to buy sports cars with the money their families had set aside to pay tuition.</p>
<p>The Governor of PA. has said he wants to decrease direct state funding to state universities and instead increase funding to direct grants to students with need. The students can use that grants to attend an in-state public or private college. He tried to cut state funding to PA. public universities by 50% in one year, and managed to get a total a 25% cut put into effect.</p>
<p>In Va., part of the concern of the Governor is that the state’s population increased by almost 900K in 10 years, but the state’s universities did not keep pace with increases in enrollment. One idea is that the public universities will increase enrollment as long as the state provides the same average funding per in-state student. In other words, if the state has been providing a subsidy equal to $5000 per student, and 1000 more in-state students are added, the state would agree to provide an additional $5 million per year in funding to that university.</p>
<p>A tuition surcharge by major can sensibly be made based on:</p>
<p>a. Higher cost of education (labs, art studio, etc.).
b. Higher student demand or impaction of the major.</p>
<p>Some have advocated doing so based on job market and pay rate for the major’s graduates (either higher for high paid majors because they can afford it, or higher for low paid majors because the state won’t be getting its money back when the graduates of the low paid majors get low paying jobs that won’t contribute much taxes). But job markets and pay rates can change quickly in the economy, so decisions made on this basis now may not look very smart four years from now when the students graduate.</p>
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<p>True, and that’s why UC will not adopt it. :D</p>
<p>Besides my cynicism, the fact is that it won’t fly bcos the so-called UC leaders and the powers that hold what few purse strings are left are too egalitarian. Heck no, we cannot raise tuition on instaters. Instead, we’ll block their access to the top campuses and then give those slots to wealthy OOS’ers.</p>