New Mexico Will Make College Tuition Free for Residents
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
[1]: https://hed.state.nm.us/financial-aid/scholarships/legislati...
"Set the cost" as in "NMHU's required textbook for Math 311 will now be 'Advanced Calculus: Second Edition', by David V. Widder" - which is a real book, list price of $22.95, from Dover Books - yeah, that way is darn easy. And when NMHU sticks with that book for a few terms, there will be plenty of used copies around campus, for only $15 or $20.
As a unversity professor myself, I am always seeking out open publishing or less expensive options for my students. The sad reality is that while there are some nice "open publishing" textbooks available, and I try and use these for my own classes whenever appropriate, very few such efforts can match the quality of a professionally edited textbook in terms of breadth of topics covered, quality of illustrations and figures, referencing to the recent literature, etc.
I wish it was otherwise, but that's currently the state of affairs in the sub-fields my work touches on (genetics, genomics, computational biology). For senior students and grad students I can usually draw on the primary literature rather than a textbook per se, but that's rough going for most students in their first few years of university.
(Point of amusement - one of my own grad school math texts, first published in 1966, is currently "List price: $175" on Amazon. Admittedly, I studied from a later edition of Rudin. But I suspect it didn't change all that much.)
Perhaps not set at the University-level, but they likely allow ethically dubious practices that inflate the cost of texts and line the pockets of their teaching staff.
Being a university drop-out, I took the opportunity to test the waters at my local technical college for a Cybersecurity program during the lockdown with a free first-year program. For the English course, I was required to purchase a $120 dollar copy of a book authored by $PROFESSOR_1, $PROFESSOR_2, et. al. - this was a small collection of stories NOT written by these professors but simply chosen by them and printed by a firm which provides what one can only describe as kickbacks to these professors. Of course, each year two or three stories are swapped out such that one could never purchase last year's used copy.
So are the universities explicitly setting costs? No, but they're full-well not setting standards and practices to reign them in either.
Even sovereign countries have a problem with brain drain. I assume that this would even be more pronounced with states. I don't think New Mexico 's job market can compete with some other parts of the nation.
It would be better if there was a national policy, to keep a level playing field. Otherwise New Mexico is just subsidising someone else's economy.
Presumably, it promotes an educated populace in such a manner that helps grow their economy and tax base.
I live in an economically conservative state (South Carolina) and we've long offered a variety of incentives (partial tuition funded via State-run Lottery) as well as some amount of technical college coverage for much-needed positions, e.g. aviation and automotive work. Seeing as Boeing, Volvo, Mercedes, BMW all have production facilities in-state it works well because those taking these courses are staying in-state for work.
I'm not a New Mexican (or an Old one, for that matter :p) but I would hope they've some idea of university graduate economic migration such that they feel this will benefit them.