America needs tuition-free state universities and trade schools. Full-stop. We're encountering endless problems, sending our entire economy (and living standards) out of whack, because we don't.
That model doesn’t really work to fund higher education. The public won’t accept doubling or tripling their property tax.
[citation needed]
And I can give you a citation against. In my local municipality the tax base is roughly $1.5 billion. The annual expenditures for the local vo-tech school for that municipality is $30 million. If all of the state and tuition funding for the vo-tech school suddenly vanished the property owners would see a rise of ... wait for it ... a grand total of 2%. Certainly a far cry from the doubling or tripling you suggested.
Amortizing the tuition across all public post-secondary institutions in the state via income and property tax bases of the entire state would likely be somewhere in the neighborhood of 1-2% total every year. Based on that analysis it seems monumentally stupid to NOT publicly fund post-secondary education.
Ditch the NCAA sports programs and it probably gets cheaper. The whole sales pitch for sports is that scholarships provide a pathway for some students to go to college that otherwise could not afford it. Get rid of tuition and suddenly that reason goes away, too.
I'm not arguing with your numbers, I guess my point is that I don't think taxpayers will accept a huge "freebie" for one group which results in their taxes going up. The optics are terrible.
Still, if I had 2 kids, doubling my property tax would be cheaper for me than my paying for their tuition at current rates.
Are you suggesting that people should be locked to the school in their district? Because that's the way primary education works.
Since GP says State Universities I would assume the State they were in would, through whatever tax policy they like.
And those taxes would replace the insurance premiums employers and individuals are currently paying out the ass for. It's a difference in who writes the checks, not how much actually goes out of individuals' pockets.
Claiming "$2.8B in new taxes" is like claiming "I Venmo you $5, you Venmo me $10" costs me five bucks.
> That’s not an accounting change—the government doesn’t have a joint bank account with the private sector.
That "joint account" is the GDP you're on about.
America needs to stop letting their University systems bloat everything unrelated to actual education and research.
- Implement ACA-style budget efficiency minimums
This much of tuition must be spent on direct-teaching expenses. Only this much may be spent on everything else. Otherwise the university in ineligible for any federal educational assistance grant/loan.
- Increase funding via increased state contributions to public universities (returning to historical averages), to lower tuition costs