I have two reactions to the recent revelation that the UW System is sitting on a mammoth $648 million nest egg: My first impulse is to shrug, grab a beer, and proceed to calculate how much the Packers’ recent draft picks will make for every question they got right on the Wonderlic – a revealing exercise that’s at once highly entertaining and unbearably soul-crushing. (Unfortunately, I was born with a modest aptitude for spelling and grammar instead of biceps that look like Dick Morris and Dennis Kucinich being shoved inside a pair of plus-sized Baby Björns.)
Truthfully, this doesn’t affect me much. I have no children and am unlikely to acquire any, so the UW’s recent tuition increases have little to no direct impact on me. And I doubt I’ll be going back to school at any point. I’m already this much of a pain in the ass with just a bachelor’s degree. A master’s or, God forbid, a doctorate would make me completely insufferable. (Mainly because I’d start adding “Ph.D.” to my name while referring to myself in the third person, and I can sense that the baristas at Dunkin’ Donuts have had quite enough already.)
Also, I can understand the UW System’s position. Why wouldn’t it want a reserve, particularly when it’s subject to the budgetary whims of the governor and the Legislature? How much flak would Kevin Reilly take from the powers-that-be if he allowed the UW System’s reserves to dwindle to nothing? Every business would like to have a cash reserve, and as former mayor Dave Cieslewicz notes at his eponymous (see? insufferable) blog, the system’s reserve is around 11.5% of its budget, which is more or less in line with that of the city of Madison.
So there’s the part of my brain that says this is much ado about nothing.
On the other hand …
It is a bit galling that the UW System accumulated this surplus while raising tuition by 5.5% annually, the highest increase allowed by law.
After all, tuition increases over the last three decades at universities across the country have been scandalously high and have far outstripped inflation. The UW System can hardly have failed to notice this. Certainly, students and their parents are aware of this trend, which has saddled thousands of students with onerous debt and doomed many of them to an almost perpetual state of indentured servitude.
If you have a moment, take a quick look at this National Center for Education Statistics chart, which shows the increase in average tuition at institutions of higher learning from 1980-81 to 2010-11.
In constant 2009-10 dollars, annual tuition plus room and board for all institutions increased from $7,759 in 1980-81 to $18,133 in 2010-11. Again, this isn’t the predictable result of inflation. These are inflation-adjusted dollars. At public institutions, the real cost of attending school skyrocketed from $5,938 in 1980-81 to $13,297 in 2010-11. At private schools, it went from $13,686 in 1980-81 to $31,395 in 2010-11.
Traditionally, attending a public university like the UW-Madison has been a great way for a student of modest means to get a world-class education, so it’s no less than alarming that the average real cost of attending a public institution is now nearly equal to that of attending a private university in 1980. So much for expanding opportunity.
Of course, liberals will point out that large cuts in state funding account for much of the increase in college costs, at least at public universities. And it’s difficult to simply dismiss the conservative argument that college costs are increasing because the federal government is pumping more money into the system through financial aid programs, allowing universities to increase tuition with impunity. (Of course, as a liberal in good standing, I’m honor bound to point out that this theory remains controversial.)
But whatever the culprit, it’s crucial that we figure this out – sooner rather than later. Given the increasing importance of higher education, we can’t afford to sit on our hands while college costs continue to spiral out of control. I feel for new college students and their parents, who are staring down the barrel of confiscatory tuition bills. And I’m more than a little relieved that this isn’t a problem I personally have to deal with.
In the grand scheme of things, carping over the UW System’s giant dragon hoard seems a bit like accusing Joan Rivers’ plastic surgeon of sending patients home with the wrong adhesive for their gauze. It’s kind of beside the point. It doesn’t help that the system is squeezing as much as it possibly can out of its already overburdened student body, but we need to find a way to truly bend the cost curve down.
This is something we all need to care about. Unfortunately, politicians – as usual – are more interested in scoring political points.
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