Tuition Increases: No Pain, No Gain?

Woodstein: In the discussions of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s budget, perhaps none are of greater interest to students than tuition and fee increases. While the budget leaves higher education funding at the same level it’s been, some of that money will come out of students’ pockets if the budget is approved.

Why aren’t students up in arms about this yet? If a pre-filed bill that would remove the tuition cap passes, students taking 18 hours will be paying 150% of the tuition they pay now. Do students not care? Should they? Surely students don’t want to pay more to go to school.

Bernwerd: Teachers cost money. Classrooms cost money. Higher education has facilities, faculty, and students expecting a certain pay or product from their affiliation with their school. So when faced with cuts to state appropriations, options for higher education are slim.

Either cut operations or find more capital … by raising tuition.

Unfortunately for students, it seems the Governor is not willing to raise the capital needed, so increases in tuition are the lesser of the evils. It should not peeve students too greatly, since the largest state school, LSU, is a bargain compared to similar institutions. Quality costs. This cost is clearly not going to come from the taxpayer, so why shouldn’t the direct beneficiaries of this quality pony up the funds?

Woodstein: I don’t know if we should simply assume the state isn’t going to pay for education. There is a growing contingent of legislators challenging Jindal and others that would like to see students paying more for higher education -- they call such maneuvers “taxes on students.”

While that may be a little dramatic, the state does have an interest in keeping funds flowing into higher ed. A better-educated populace is a more affluent populace -- and a more affluent populace pays more in taxes. If you keep increasing costs to students, you begin slowly edging out the number of students that can go to school -- that’s both a short-term loss for universities and a long-term loss for the state.

It’s an even bigger loss for students. It seems to me that, if government is supposed to help build society, there’s no better way for it do so than by providing as cheap an education as practical.

Bernwerd: In a perfect world, your argument would be absolute. But alas this is not a perfect world, it is Jindal’s world. And in Jindal’s world, the state has a massive budget deficit and one of the only pots of money to fix this deficit happens to be higher education. So let us for a moment dwell on reality and consider what is best for the current or soon-to-be college student.

Let us imagine the situation were there a moderate cut to the budgets of our already battered higher education institutions.

There will be blood.

Teachers will be slashed, leading to less course offerings, which will send students ranting on their social media about not getting that class they really needed to graduate. So what is at stake here is a prompt graduation.

I would imagine students would be happy to pay a few hundred extra each year for assurance. Assurance that they would receive a quality degree in a timely manner rather than having to pay for a few extra semesters and miss out on the gains that employment would bring them.

Woodstein: Permanently increasing tuition to fill a temporary budget gap seems like poor long-term planning to me -- especially for present and future students that won’t be able to afford college. But I doubt I’ll convince you either way, so for now let’s just wait and see if the Governor can club his tuition bills through the legislature.

THE 100 WORD BLITZ

We decided to mix things up this week. Instead of a debate, the two of us are going to be making the same arguments. But we know nobody likes to see two schmucks sitting around agreeing with each other, so we’re going to add an air of competition.

We’re going to take three basic topics and state our cases in 100 words or less. Go to our web poll on the right side of the site to vote on who made the argument the best.

WHY IS BOBBY JINDAL’S BUDGET TERRIBLE?

Bernward: It certainly seems the Governor has never heard the old saying about assumptions, because he makes plenty of them with the budget.

One example: Jindal's plan assumes $92 million from a rerouting on TOPS funding. A contentious move considering the funds will now come from a trust that generates cash for health care and K-12 education. A difficult move considering rerouting would require both legislative approval and a popular vote against entities with far reaching persuasive power.

It's dishonest, but politically savvy move by Jindal who will use the legislature as a scape-goat if his assumptions fail.

Woodstein: Saying the governor’s proposal is optimistic is pure understatement. More appropriate adjectives include, but are not limited to: quixotic, delusional, and irresponsible.

To assume the passage of a complicated, controversial legislative package that includes constitutional amendments is at best naïve hubris and at worst obvious political hostage-taking.

To assume it in a state budget is dangerous and only technically – barely – constitutional.

This budget leaves no room for error. If the legislature Jindal has so capriciously alienated challenges him at all, the budget will quickly be wreckage.

This is Jindal at his classic worst – arrogant, paternalistic and completely separated from reality.

WHY IS THE DEBATE OVER MERGING SUNO/ UNO STUPID?

Woodstein: I’ve got one number for you: 8 percent.

That’s not Mr. Bernward’s spelling test score; it’s SUNO’s graduation rate.

Say you had a toaster that worked only 8 percent of the time. Would you keep it?

No, you wouldn’t, especially if your grandfather only gave it to you because he wasn’t allowed a real one.

That is exactly what SUNO defenders want. SUNO exists only because blacks weren’t allowed into good schools back when Louisiana was, well, racist. Now they are, so it’s unfair to keep them in an obviously-failing institution for “historical value.”

Bernward: It's simple: Louisiana has 14 public, four-year colleges and universities with five separate governing boards.

Having 14 state funded entities only degrades the quality of the system as a whole.

Why would the state fund elite programs in the same field separated by a few hundred miles? It's not about black and white, it's about dollars and cents.

This is a move that should be considered state wide to build a system with a strong community college network to provide a foundation for moving on to institutions that compete academically and financially with the nation's elite.

ARE TUITION AND FEE INCREASES TAXES ON STUDENTS?

Bernward: This claim will be a handy piece of rhetoric in the election season, but it is ultimately misleading.

In an ideal world, the state would have a streamlined, fully-funded higher education system. In reality, the state is dysfunctional, and students will have to front the extra cost to receive anything nearing an elite education.

Indeed the state does benefit from a highly educated citizenry, but students are the primary recipients of the benefits of education. Simply put: quality is costly.

Woodstein: As much as students and Sen. Peterson would like to argue that tuition and fee increases are taxes on students, such accusations are more rhetoric than reality.

A tax is something that the citizens of the state pay for the common good. While it’s certainly true that a more educated workforce is better for the state in the long-run, that’s a corollary benefit of many individuals advancing individually.

Higher education is primarily better for those being educated. It is secondarily better for the citizens. So it’s only fair for students to pay more than others for the service.

Higher Education: Intelligent Crybabies?

Woodstein: So LSU Provost Jack Hamilton is out talking about how catastrophic budget cuts have been to the University. Frankly, I’m getting tired of it. Yes, cuts to LSU have happened, and, yes, they haven’t been easy. But I think LSU administrators are blowing these cuts out of proportion. Hamilton would sure like to think LSU is getting razed to the ground by these cuts, because it lets him do things he otherwise couldn’t -- like raise tuition and fees, trim professorial fat and gain independence from state bureaucracy -- but I’m not convinced.

Bernward: While I do understand how LSU’s song and dance routine is getting a little old, they do have numbers on their side. Can you begin to imagine how much $300 million is. This is how much has been cut from state education coffers in the past two years.

At LSU specifically the amputation has been closer to $45 million. We could talk about the various centers and programs shuttered, but lets focus on direct student influence. We always hear the phrase “greater efficiencies” thrown around when administrators talk about dealing with these cuts, but greater efficiencies are beginning to cut into the meat of the University. This translates into tangible losses of faculty and staff. In the faculty ranks alone, 140 positions have been slashed. These are spots that were previously fulfilling the University’s core mission: teach students. While this number is bad, it fails to quantify the true loss of some of the University’s most distinquished faculty to the budget crisis.

Woodstein: Yes, Mr. Bernwood, I can imagine what $45 million is. I can also imagine what more than $800 million means -- and that’s LSU’s entire budget for a year. $45 million over two years represents a pretty tiny percentage drop. LSU Admins always say they hate to talk about cuts in percentage terms; that’s convenient, considering LSU’s total budget has been cut by about a single percent.

And the 140 million faculty positions is terribly misleading. Those aren’t 140 fired professors; they’re 140 eliminated positions, almost all of which were vacant. While that still hurts, it’s hardly apocalyptic, because that number includes people who died, retired or left for greener pastures -- pastures that, by the way, must certainly seem all the greener given the doomsday rhetoric coming out of T. Boyd Hall.

Bernward: One percent is slightly misleading considering the divisions within LSU’s general budget. LSU is a massive operation encompassing much more than teaching enterprises. Consider there are nearly $200 million tied up in auxillary services. Using the entirety of the budget as a reference doesn’t measure the actual student impact budget cuts will have. And while the 140 faculty eliminated are not actual people, they are positions that would have otherwise been filled and would now be teaching students or contributing to LSUin some way. One should also consider LSU has had to shift and slice degree programs. Most notably LSU will no longer offer degree programs in various foreign languages. This further dilutes the quality of education students will receive.

Woodstein: I guess I’m not going to convince you that budget cuts haven’t been that bad so far. Can we at least agree that the priority now should be focusing on Gov. Jindal’s budget, which has huge implications for the future?

Bernward: Fair enough.