I cannot understand why, really, I have read that they pay double because they have never payed taxes in that state, but that sounds absurd since all taxes go to the government, don’t they? Maybe I am missing something, the public system does not work in that way in my country, so I assume it is something related to politics, would you mind explaining me please?
@Mrduque, the US has a Federal system. States have governments and taxes and fund various things as well as does the Federal government. So do various localities. In other words, there is more than one level of government in the US. That is not the case in your country?
In the US there are several layers of government. People pay taxes to the federal government and also pay money to their state government. Public universities are supported by state governments and are subsidized for residents of that state.
Most public universities in the US are primarily funded or subsidized by state governments, which offer the lower price for their state residents who pay sales and income taxes to the state.
Public state schools have a duty to educate students from their state. OOS students subsidize IS students to help with this mission.
@PurpleTitan Nope, all taxes go directly to the government, and you pay according to your income. in private schools the prices are fixed of course.
To complicate things further, we also pay LOCAL taxes to our town or county government. Public K-12 education is funded by a combination of tax money from the local, state, and federal sources.
Is your entire country run from the federal level?
And, to add to all of the confusion, some of the more popular states have huge tax costs.
Local governments, in my town, tax according to the value of our homes; its our property taxes. When you move, your costs don’t stay the same, your taxes typically increase. A lot of people try not to move because they don’t want to pay significant property tax.
Plus, locally, we have to pay something called Mello Roos taxes which are local taxes to fund the building of new schools in our neighborhood. Those taxes are set for a minimum of 25 years.
Oh yeah, love those Mello Roos taxes.
All of us are completely used to accepting the disparity between in-state and out-of-state tuition, but it actually makes no sense whatsoever other than as a matter of the crass political calculation that politicians need not do anything for anyone who isn’t permitted to vote in the elections for their offices. It’s not as though long-time residents of any state pay into a fund that then subsidizes their or their children’s educations. (They may, in fact, do something just like that, but with a 529 plan, not as part of their taxes, and when they do they generally can take it with them if they leave.) States that attract a net inflow of population, including college students, derive huge long-term benefits from that. The states those people leave, on a net basis, suffer significantly, even though on the prevailing theory they get a potential windfall of taxes paid without the need to deliver a subsidized education. Is there any state that doesn’t want more young, highly educated people?
In the US, residents pay separate taxes to different levels of government:
- US federal government
- state (there are 50 states)
- local (city, town, county)
Other countries have national universities . The only national colleges in the US are military academies (US Naval Academy, Air Force Academy, etc.)
Each state has its own government (that’s why we’re called the United States) and uses the state taxes it collects to subsidize public universities in its own state. Subsizing the tuition is very expensive, therefore, most states have no compelling resson to offer subsidized tuition rates to people who neither pay taxes nor vote in that state.
Local taxes (annual property taxes and local sales tax) are used to fund local public K-12 (in contrast, in many other countries, there’s no such thing as an annual property tax. In these countries, taxes on properties is only paid when a property is sold.)
@sylvan8798 No, I think it is called central government (I don’t know the exact translation), basically all taxes are managed by a single entity which establishes how much money each state receives. That must be the reason why OOS tuition does not exists
@“aunt bea” @youcee that seems like a pain in the back, those are too many taxes.
Nevertheless, the quality of education of most US high-schools and universities is higher in overall. In my country research is almost non-existent, there are no such things like law or medicine school (you become a doctor/lawyer in 5 years of undergraduate studies, of course there are graduate studies but there is not pre-med or pre-law), school curricula cannot be chosen by the student, English is pretty poor (most students don’t get beyond A2, B1 by the time they graduate), your transcript does not matter in University admissions (a single national examination determines it).
The only good thing that comes to my mind is that the government has recently given out full scholarships to low income students who excel in their national examinations (11000 students approximately) making the last statement not so bad.
The US is also a big country. I imagine your country isn’t so big.
A big Latin American country like Brazil also has multiple levels of government.
Oh, another reason is because American state governments have really underfunded their public unis in recent years (at some schools, providing less than 5% of the budget), so schools have to get more from tuition, and raising OOS tuition is politically more acceptable.
@PurpleTitan yes, my country is not that big, roughly 500000 high school students get graduated each year, I cannot imagine how many would graduate in the US @-)
The US has 3M+ HS grads each year. Roughly 1% of the population.
It’s not an issue of size of country. China is huge.
It’s an issue of the US not having national (non-military) public universities.
@JHS, interesting points you raise. A couple questions:
- Do you think that the state that helped fund the establishment & ongoing operation of a public college has no property rights with respect to the school?
- If out of state students want to attend the school, should the funding state not be compensated for creating a competitively superior college?
Of course, that’s the reason. It makes me laugh when people rationalize it as a reward for being a contributing taxpayer.
There are plenty of non-residents who are big tax-contributors to the state (e.g., business owners, homeowners). They don’t get a tuition break because they cannot vote in the state.
Then there are welfare recipients who pay no taxes and get a tuition break. That’s because they can vote in the state.
17 makes no sense. It's not a reward--it's what you voted to do--other states might not do the same--see NH and most of northeast with mediocre publics.
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