PRICES go up -- it's a simple concept, and one most people grasp on a basic level. The average person may not understand the finer points of inflation, but he certainly is aware that the prices of everything from eggs to automobiles to college tuition rise a few percent each year. And while the average parents may not be ecstatic about paying slightly more each year for their child's education, they probably accept it, knowing their income likely will increase as well.
Although a tuition decrease would be welcomed by most, parents should not be happy with it. Behind the seemingly pleasant idea of not having to pay more for tuition is a dangerous economic trend. If it is allowed to persist, it will threaten the quality of education that Virginia's universities provide.
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The costs of running a university go up every year, just like everything else. Inflation makes everything the University spends money on -- from professors' salaries to computer equipment to the need for constant general improvement of facilities -- slightly more expensive each year.
Instead of increasing tuition across-the-board to cover the increase in expenditures, the General Assembly has opted to make out-of-state students pay for the inevitably increased costs of University operations.
The newly Republican-controlled General Assembly passed a biannual budget this month that funds increases in University salaries by increasing out-of-state tuition. This ensures that out-of-state students will continue to pay for the increased costs of running the University for at least the next two years, as they have this past year.
This is a smart political move -- in-state students and their parents vote in Virginia, while out-of-state students don't. But it's an ill-advised decision from financial and educational perspectives.
Part of what makes inflation-based increases bearable is that people get used to them -- they accept small yearly increases as inevitable.
But the longer in-state tuition goes without those seemingly inevitable increases, the more accustomed Virginians will become to a set tuition rate. As a result, people will react more negatively should anyone ever try to raise it.
It therefore will become harder for politicians to ever adjust in-state tuition for inflation, for fear of a hostile reaction from voters. This will threaten to lock Virginia into a system in which out-of-state students pay for the increasing costs of running the University. And if out-of-state tuition increases faster than inflation over a long period, out-of-state students gradually will start to leave.
As it is now, the University is a considerably better deal, even out-of-state, than most top private schools. But if out-of-state tuition keeps increasing to pay for the freeze of in-state tuition, this gap will gradually shrink. Once it becomes only slightly more expensive to go to an Ivy League school than to go to the University, out-of-state students will choose to do just that.
Likewise, the difference in tuition between the University and the public universities in out-of-state students' home states will increase. It's likely that as that gap widens, some out-of-state students won't pay extra to attend this public school.
Losing out-of-state students -- either to private schools or to other public schools -- is dangerous for two main reasons. First, if the out-of-state students leave, Virginia will have no one left to foot the bill. Politicians will then have two choices: increase revenues or decrease expenditures.
Increasing revenues means significantly raising taxes or in-state tuition -- two things politicians want to avoid at all costs, because such moves are big turn-offs to voters. This leaves decreasing expenditures, which means paying professors less and/or decreasing the amount spent on equipment and facilities. The University depends on the quality of its education to attract top professors and to have physical resources. If the University loses the ability to pay for these things, educational quality will suffer.
But out-of-state students contribute more to this school than their checkbooks. They bring geographical, cultural, racial and social diversity to the University. Without out-of-state students, the University would become increasingly homogenized.
The potential damages to this institution from freezing in-state tuition certainly won't happen tomorrow. But each year without in-state tuition increases brings us closer to that danger.
Tuition increases of a few percent per year are not too great a cost to ask Virginians to bear. Losing high-quality public education is.
(Bryan Maxwell is a Cavalier Daily associate editor.)
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