Comment by mdkess | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mdkess | Hacker News Reader

When people vote to not raise taxes to fund these schools, what do they expect is going to happen to subsidized tuition? We saw this happen a few years ago in Washington after voters voted against raising taxes to fund schools, and schools started accepting more foreign students and fewer local students to make their budgets. People were upset about this, for some reason.

If the school gives four students $5,000 scholarships on a $20,000 bill - the school makes $60,000 and the students feel good about themselves. If they give one student $20,000, they make zero. At the end of the day, someone has to foot the bill - and if it's not the taxpayer, it'll be the people who can afford to pay.

Of course, high quality education should be available to everyone, but as a society we have to be more lucid about where the money is coming from. If taxpayers want people from low income families to go to school (and I am firmly in this camp), taxpayers need to be willing to pay for these people to go to school.

I think it's too easy to blame people who vote against raising taxes. The rate at which college tuition has gone up since I went ('95-'99) is insane. This is not including that you could graduate from college from my era and find a decent job.

I don't know why the tuition fees have risen so rapidly over a short period of time but it's certainly not helping out middle class families.

What increased most was the sticker price - net price has experienced a much slower increase rate: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/05/22/153316565/the-pric...

That's not necessarily applicable here because they were not including the cost to the state in the net cost (only the cost to the individual).

University of WA cost has not gone up a single penny since 1990. It used to be that the state paid 80% of that, now it is 30%. Which is why the cost the students see has increased so much -- decrease in state funding, and indirectly, people who vote against taxes.

If UW cost had simply kept pace with inflation, it would be $30,000 this year. And if WA residents had maintained their support at 80%, the student bill would be $6000.

Can you provide sources showing this? I wasn't familiar with these numbers and would like to tell people about them.

here you go:

https://depts.washington.edu/opbblog/wordpress/wp-content/up...

Many states have significantly reduced funding for public higher education. Much of tax funding now goes towards Medicaid, and perhaps half of that is not for poor people who need medical assistance but rather middle-class people in nursing homes. Nursing home payments are paid out of Medicaid as well as healthcare for the poor.

So, in a sense, the reason why states are spending less on higher education than a decade or two ago is simply because of this middle class entitlement. The middle class should be purchasing nursing home insurance but instead they leave it up to the state to support.

It isn't a lack of taxes, it is that Medicaid (a federally mandated program) is out of control and is absolutely destroying state education budgets.

"Governments’ general support for higher education 25 years ago was nearly 50 percent greater than state spending on Medicaid. That relationship has now flipped: Medicaid spending is about 50 percent greater than support for higher education. If higher education’s share of state budgets had remained constant instead of being crowded out by rising Medicaid costs, it would be getting some $30 billion more than it receives today, or more than $2,000 per student."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/opinion/19orszag.html?_r=1

It seems we play plenty of taxes if the opening quote to the article can be believed: "Neat fact: If the federal government were to take all of the money it pours into various forms of financial aid each year, it could go ahead and make tuition free, or close to it, for every student at every public college in the country."

If the government were to make the current cost of attendance available to students, colleges would just double their prices (unless you implemented gasp price controls).

I'm highly doubtful people would put up with that. Essentially people would be paying for college twice.

People will put up with anything if it's a prerequisite for being employable, as we've seen from the massive rise in tuition already.

A quote like that, I want to see how they added up their sums for "all of the money it pours into.." and "tuition free, or close to it, for..".

That statement sounds somewhat deceptive, since it likely means we could make tuition free for current students at public colleges, but does not account for the current private-school students who would flock to now-free public schools.

Also, I think the gap in actual cost of tuition between private colleges and public colleges is somewhat overstated, the primary difference being that public colleges are maybe 30-50% subsidized, while private colleges are more like 20-30% subsidized.

This is the classic dilemna, everyone wants good public services but low taxes.

The argument is often that either ways should be found to deliver better services for lower cost, or that money should be diverted away from something else instead of a tax raise. Or people want a tax increase for somebody else but not themselves to cover it.

>everyone wants good public services but low taxes.

Everyone??

Typical right-winger: I want low taxes and don't care about public services (although naturally I'd prefer public services to no services).

Typical left-winger: I want public services and don't care about low taxes (although naturally I'd prefer low taxes to high taxes).

Normal voters aren't ideologues, they're self-interested human beings.

Agreed. My point is just that each person tends to favor one or the other.

In truth, it's a false dichotomy for everyone except the super-rich. People could have both low taxes and good social services if they would be willing to tax the super-rich to the same extent that we did so back in, say, 1950.

Hell, even 1985. 91% tax rates probably aren't good policy regardless of the bracket.

If the taxes will be raised to cover current level of educational expenses, how you estimate the expenses would behave, based on observable historical trends? Is there any limit to how much money would be spent of highest quality education available to everyone and on prices taxpayers would pay to make it happen?

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