Maryland has been an exception to the rule in recent years, as lawmakers have kept higher education funding mostly level despite the economic downturn. As a result, the state&8217;s public colleges and universities have been able to hold tuition increases to a few percent a year, and that after an extended tuition freeze.
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EDITORIAL: Making College Affordable technology colleges,The plan put forth by the president would double the number of federally subsidized college wortechnology collegesk-study jobs over the next five years, giving more students an opportunity to find campus employment to help offset tuition and other bills. Mr. Obama also prosed a one-year extension of lowinterest rateson certain federal studentloans, shifting eligibility requirements on others and permanently extending the American Opportunity Tax Credit, which allows milies to deduct some college expenses from their income tax.
That&8217;s because tuition is only one of the revenue sources public colleges and universities use to pay their operating costs. Other sources include endowments, alumni contributions, grants and gifts, but by r the most important source of funding comes from state governments. When the states&8217; revenues ll, as they have during the current economic downturn, so does public spending on higher education, leaving schools more dependent than ever on tuition to pay their bills.
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So r, so good. But the line that got the most attention from educators was Mr. Obama&8217;s vow to &8220;put colleges on notice&8221; that schools whose tuition rates continue to rise well beyond inflation can expect to see a decrease in federal funding. In effect, the president was threatening to cut funding for institutions that don&8217;t take significant steps to reduce, or at least control, the rising cost of a college education something that ultimately could make them even more dependent on higher tuition rates.
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Judging a school&8217;s efficiency solely on the basis of the tuition it charges can thus be misleading, because it doesn&8217;t take into account the level of state funding an institution receives. Nor is it a particularly good indicator of effectiveness in improving student outcomes, because many students leave college for reasons unrelated to tuition costs. Furthermore, the sticker price of tuition doesn&8217;t take into account the extensive need-based aid programs some schools offer. And even in the best-case scenarios, there are practical limits to colleges&8217; ability to control costs, which are driven largely by increases in the number of culty and staff and higher costs for cilities, energy, health care andfinancialaid all of which rise ster than the overall consumer inflation rate.
There&8217;s no doubt rising college tuition costs are it harder for more students to enroll in school and stay there until graduation. And Mr. Obama is right that schools need to be smarter about controlling costs without sacrificing quality. As a nation, the U.S. must invest more in higher education if it wants to have the well-educated workforce needed for American companies to compete successfully in the global marketplace.
But states such as California, where the impact of the recession on the state budget has been much worse than here, have had to institute massive cuts in higher education spending. The result has been sharp cuts in staff, course offerings and other academic programs, as well as stiff tuition hikes. To further penalize the system by withdrawing federal funding would only make matters worse.
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(Source The Baltimore Sun) -In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama announced a number of new proposals aimed at college more affordable. Most people agree that expanding access to higher education is a worthy goal and that the rapidly rising cost of a college education is a problem. But the president&8217;s focus on punishing schools that il to rein in tuition costs oversimplifies a complex issue in a way that could end up harming the nation&8217;s colleges and universities as much as it helps them.
The president called on the nation&8217;s colleges and universities to develop more efficient and effective ways to serve students, and promised to reward schools for innovations such as redesigned course offerings and new uses of technology that help more students succeed in class and graduate on time. And he backed new initiatives to help milies judge the costs and quality of schools, so they can make better decisions in choosing which college or university to attend.
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Source The Baltimore Sun
But withdrawing federal aid from schools that il to hold down costs would need to be done carefully, lest it produce just the opposite of the intended result. Everyone wants college to be more affordable. But officials are going to have to be a lot clearer about what they mean by affordability and how that standard will be applied before the public can judge whether the president&EDITORIAL: Making College Affordable technology colleges8217;s proposal will have the same success in encouraging innovation and reform at the college level, as did the administration&8217;s Race to the Top competition for elementary and secondary schools. As always, the devil will be in the details.
Meanwhile, the state board of regents has introduced a number of effectiveness and efficiency initiatives that reduced the average time students spend earning a degree by half a year and cut operating costs by $250 million over the last five years. Those measures caused Maryland tuition costs to ll from seventh highest in the nation to the 26thhighest today, leaving the state well-positioned to benefit from the incentives the Obama administration is offering to schools that hold down tuition costs while improving student outcomes.
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