Five years ago, Governor Cuomo and the Legislature approved annual tuition hikes for public colleges and universities.\u00a0 At that time, the argument had two simple rationales to support the plan:<\/p>\n
First, it was argued that college students and their families wanted \u201cpredictability\u201d in tuition costs, so that annual increases could assure them that hikes would never exceed a predictable, annual amount.\u00a0 That argument was weak, after all what could be more predictable than having no increases at all?<\/p>\n
The second \u2013 and more compelling \u2013 argument was that the state was facing massive deficits and that it had no money to bolster public colleges.\u00a0 The students would just have to pay more.<\/p>\n
Fast forward five years.\u00a0 The state has jacked up the cost of attending public college by a whopping 30 percent.\u00a0 At the same time, the state has frozen its support for the State and City University systems.<\/p>\n
In short, the students are paying a lot more and the state is not.<\/p>\n
Yet, the governor has once again proposed hiking tuition.\u00a0 He offers no new state support and wants students to continue to pay annual hikes in tuition.<\/p>\n
The argument is the same \u2013 the far less compelling argument that students want the predictability of annual tuition hikes.\u00a0 Which is simply not true.<\/p>\n
In fact, it is the opposite that is true \u2013 students want predictability all right, but they want the predictability of no tuition hikes, they want the predictability of a state flush with cash adding revenues to enhance higher education.<\/p>\n
The second argument used five years ago \u2013 that the state is facing deficits \u2013 is simply not true anymore.\u00a0 In fact, according to the state Comptroller, the state has a $1 billion surplus<\/em> this year.\u00a0 While $650 million of that surplus is coming from state settlements, $350 million is coming from enhanced tax revenues.<\/p>\n Given that the state is flush with money, why should attending a college cost more?<\/em><\/p>\n In addition, the governor proposes no<\/em> broad-based increases in state financial aid programs, thus leaving either the student, or the college, short.\u00a0 He does propose to expand financial aid to those college students who are undocumented immigrants, but he proposes no expansions in the state\u2019s Tuition Assistance Program, which provides benefits to all<\/em> students in need.<\/p>\n As a result, the State and City University systems will have to offer financial assistance to needy students, and where will that money come from if not the state?\u00a0 You guessed it, students.<\/p>\n Why do it?\u00a0 One guess would be that the governor simply wants to spend less on public college and instead fund other projects.\u00a0 Public colleges have no economic leverage, they can\u2019t threaten to leave the state, and are, in fact part of government itself.\u00a0 The students are the least likely group of adults to make campaign contributions, or even vote.<\/p>\n They are politically weak.<\/p>\n There can be no serious argument that making college more costly helps society.\u00a0 The education level of the state (and the nation) is central to a growing economy \u2013 and it is important to ensuring that citizens can adequately participate in the policy debates of their own democracy.<\/p>\n Hiking college costs in an era of fiscal difficulty is bad, but understandable.\u00a0 Hiking costs in an era of plenty is indefensible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Five years ago, Governor Cuomo and the Legislature approved annual tuition hikes for public colleges and universities.\u00a0 At that time, the argument had two simple rationales to support the plan: First, it was argued that college students and their families wanted \u201cpredictability\u201d in tuition costs, so that annual increases could assure them that hikes would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1621"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1625,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1621\/revisions\/1625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}