- UFWS Blog
Just in case the editors at the Seattle Times didn’t get my point yesterday about what does and does not qualify as “smaller government,” I thought I’d repost the graph above as a convenient illustration.
As you can see from the top line, total education funding per full-time enrollment (FTE), in inflation-adjusted dollars, has remained relatively flat over the past 20 years at Washington’s four-year public universities, a statistic that pretty much puts to rest the notion that our higher education funding crisis has anything to do with spiraling costs. In fact, it’s the other two lines that tell the real story, showing state funding steadily tracking down, as college tuition prices steadily rise to make up the difference… a trend that has been most dramatic over the past few years, with Gov. Gregoires latest proposed cuts amounting to a 50 percent cut in state higher education funding since 2008 alone!
Since the Seattle Times is so keen on user fees (and tuition certainly qualifies as that), is this the kinda “smaller government” they’re jonesing for?
I sure hope not, and I’m guessing neither do the folks at the newly formed College Promise Coalition, a partnership of administrators, faculty, alumni, parents and students from Washington’s public colleges and universities. They’ll be holding a kickoff event this morning at 9:30 AM on the North Capitol Steps in Olympia, featuring advocates from all six of Washington’s public four-year institutions, including four university presidents. Here’s hoping lawmakers take these educators concerns at least as seriously as they do those from the dithering editorial brain trust at Seattle’s math-challenged daily.
hmmm the new guy certainly likes graphs……….
Keep bringing the facts Goldy. Hopefully the trolls stay behind on your old blog…
null @1,
The new guy likes facts, and graphs are a good way of illustrating them.
Hell yeah, that is the kind of smaller government a lot of us want. It makes sense to you that in 1991 a university student only paid $3000 towards a $14000 education? That’s too much subsidy and skews what a student would value their higher education at. 50% subsidy is still too much.
INFLATION. Get it?
Now go buy some gold.
Poor GOldy. Runs a money losing blog, has an unpaid gig at Slog, and now wants us to pay for his kids’ college educations because he refuses to grow up and get a real job.
I wish you had a graph that showed what percentage of parents with college age students voted for Eyman.
Maybe, just maybe, if people had to work their asses off to get a college degree (like they used to), it might be worth more than the paper it’s printed on. As it is, peoples’ sense of “entitlement” has turned it into something totally meaningless.
@4 Go fuck yourself. Burying students in debt doesn’t make them value their education, it makes them hate their education, causes a large percentage to drop out because they can’t afford it, and the ever fewer graduates the system does produce end up joblocked in positions they hate. In a time when we most need an agile workforce, our education system is instead helping to calcify it.
I could swear I hear #8 shouting “Stay off My Grass, you damn hooligans!” in the background of that post.
queen @6,
Unpaid gig? I guess I’ll find out on payday.
And FYI, my ex and I pre-paid four years of tuition via the state’s GET program a decade ago, so my daughter’s education is all paid for, and at bargain basement prices. So go fuck yourself before attributing my posts to selfish motives.
@9 – I couldn’t agree with you more. I’m saying the students who can’t afford to go get a higher education shouldn’t even go to college. As you point out, the diploma is increasingly worthless anyway. We could use an apprentice program similar to what Switzerland has. Always going to need those electricians, plumbers, and the like.
Yes, what we need is more 20 somethings with liberal arts degrees. Especially in this economy.
For those who would like to read what a couple of Nobel economists have to say on this issue, check this out. Bottom line, do we want to have everyone subsidize those who go to college when the returns from going to college (vs not going) are growing over time?
http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2011/0…
@8 – My state college’s tuition back in the early ’80s was $400/semester. I hardly had to work my ass off. When was this golden age of yours when education was so desirably inaccessible?
@14 Dead link
When did facts ever win an argument? Fox News has proven that facts don’t matter.
@15, I’m sorry your degree was worthless too.
@16. Sorry! Try this and scroll down a bit. It’s a great blog, though perhaps a bit dry at times.
http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/beckerpos…
@8,
My father paid nothing for his college education (thanks to the feds) 60 years ago. He graduated valedictorian and went on to law school. Are you still going to pretend that college was expensive in the good old days?
Let me guess. You also had to walk 10 miles uphill to school (both ways).
Barefoot. In the snow. 🙂
“Unpaid gig? I guess I’ll find out on payday.”
I’m sure it’s a pay check equal to your talents.
“GET program a decade ago, so my daughter’s education is all paid for”
The woefully underfunded one that’s about to go belly up? Should have invest in APPL a decade ago like I did. Both kids educations paid for along with my early retirement. Thanks for using macs Goldy.
@12 I totally agree, and this is something small-government Republican’s never mention. Lowering government subsidies to higher education should be coupled with lowering the barrier for entry of education-for-profit organizations. Increased competition among DeVry (for example) and newcomers would lead to lowering the entry cost of the average citizen towards much needed certifications, which lead to better jobs and available funds for a future degree if wanted. The current “higher” education model of numerous pre-req classes and the like hurt us all by increasing the burden of obtaining job related training.
ain’t gonna @22,
The “G” in GET stands for “Guaranteed.”
(And FYI, I bought AAPL for my IRA account in October, 2001, and have held it since. Not a lot of shares, but let’s just say that I’ve made a helluva lot more money off of Apple than I’ve spent on their products.)
@12 Did you mean to reply to #8? Cuz I’m pretty sure we don’t agree on much of anything, cliche. You’re speaking actively against social mobility, a stance that’s among the select club we can honestly call un-American. The caste system is slowly becoming passe even in India, homes. It’s just wrong. Merit should be the only barrier to higher education, not cost. The next generation of Einsteins shouldn’t go to college just because their parents are poor? Yeah, that makes sense.
Alllllllllright, who made this here chart? Y-axis labels that draw a conclusion about the data rather than merely informing the reader of the metric used? Acronyms used before a first instance written longhand in title-case? I’m sure the data is trying to tell me something far more infuriatin’, but this chart is burnin’ me up inside.
The increasing cost of tuition is driving up health care costs substantially, too. Most of the pre-meds, I see, even the ones who would rather do family practice or public health work, feel that they HAVE to go for the highest-paying medical specialties to be able to pay off their student loans. And then their fees drive up Medicare costs, which drives up state spending, which causes governors to lower state aid to universities, which causes…..
.
And say, why stop at cutting state support of universities? Why not have increasing tuition for elementary school, too? Only the wealthy deserve to be able to read!
Guaranteed……that’s what all the underfunded state pensioners think too.
” I bought AAPL”
Good to hear you’ve profited from the exploitation of Chinese labor. How many suicides can we blame on you Goldy.
My take on this? Basically all of these wealthy Republican voters managed to get a relatively affordable education because their parents and grandparents subsidized it through their taxes.
But they want to have it both ways: they already got their cheap education and now want to stick it future generations. It’s a massive abrogation of the generational social contract.
For those of you who think a Liberal Arts degree is worthless, I disagree. I had a very insulated life as a youngster. Going to college changed my entire perspective on the world and made me appreciate the value of education. The biggest problems mankind faces can be changed for the better with education. What’s happening is the Eymans of this country are robbing our young people of a college education so the wealthy can keep even more of their money. If you think that’s a good thing, I feel sorry for you.
Here’s (link below) a great thought-provoking opinion that supports reducing state subsidy of higher education. The author argues that universities are more responsive to student needs than K-12 education, because state universities compete with private schools, and students (or their parents) who attend state universities pay for some of their education. I paid for most of my undergraduate and graduate degrees (via loans) and I worked very hard and learned a lot at both schools. Many of my fellow graduate students had most or all of their tuitions paid by their employers. In general, I would say that those students seemed to work much less hard. So in my experience, when someone pays for their own degree, they will approach the coursework more seriously, and they will demand a lot more from their school as well.
http://popecenter.org/clarion_call/artic…
“Students at public universities pay less than the full cost of their education and therefore are less savvy consumers than they would be if they paid full fare. They are also less committed to becoming serious students and many never finish. Administrators get a lot of their funding from state and federal governments, rather than from students and that affects their incentives: students’ education becomes less important. Research often dominates teaching; inexperienced students teach undergraduates; special interests often hold sway. Such factors lead to many of the deficiencies that the Pope Center reports on.”
@32: Interesting, but very wrong. At my large midwestern university (Rock Chalk Jayhawk), the proportion of funding has already dropped from 70% of the school’s budget in the 1960’s to 20% today. There’s just not that much more to cut.
And I see kids trying to carry a full 15-credit semester load in the natural sciences (which takes 45-50 hours/week of class and study time for the average college student) while ALSO trying to work a 40-50-hour-a-week job to pay for it. It can’t be done. Or rather, it can be done, but the resulting C or D average is not going to get that kid a good education or a rewarding job afterwards. Should we just tell all the kids from poor families “Tough, no college for you?”
The author says that the private marketplace will supply higher education (and everything else) better than the government can. There is NO evidence that the private marketplace will do anything of the sort for poor people, any more than it did before the GI Bill.
Wow! Look at all the comments supporting the expansion of the class divide.
All of you dipshits who support not funding our future can go fuck yourself. Those kids in college right now will be the ones taking care of your ass while you’re in the hospital or home.
@33: The free market is efficient but not equitable. That’s why we need the government to step in and subsidize education, because the free market would not supply education to everyone. The author is arguing that we may be seeing some signs of OVER subsidization of education by the government. Students who pay far less than the actual cost of their education AND use their time in school to drink in excess and skip classes, as well as professors who suck at teaching and are instead incentivized to publish in obscure journals are two indications that maybe, just maybe, we as a society are over-subsidizing higher education. Her point is that by shifting funding sources from the government to students will make schools better because they will need to be more responsive to students. Professors may need to become better teachers because students demand it. It’s a provoking argument and one that should be considered seriously.
University costs have risen much too fast over the last 20 years. As an undergrad within the University of California (’89-’94), I was able to work 25 hours a week and pay for my total yearly expenses (around $14k). It wasn’t fun, I had to work full time whenever there was a break, and I had about five hours per week of free time…but I definitely feel that hard-working students should be able to pay their own way through college at a quality PUBLIC university. Isn’t this a hallmark of our society?
Today, my nephew forks over $27k a year for the same opportunity. This would translate into working 52 hours/week at a realistic salary of $10/hour. It’s sad that a hard working individual cannot afford to put him/herself through college the same way, just 20 years later.