Texas Taxpayers Shouldn’t Pay More for Universities
The DMN has an article on the cost of college — “Students take on more debt, work after cuts to Texas college aid”.
We at Rock the Ivory Tower revealed last year that university graduates are now carrying more student loan debt than all the credit card debt in the US.
This debt denies them the opportunity to realize the American dream. Moreover, unemployment rates for college graduates are the highest since 1970.
This article appears to propose shifting the cost of a college education from the student to all taxpayers. That simply increases the size of government and raises taxes, which college graduates and all of us pay. College education can be more affordable if colleges and universities will embrace reforms. We can love our universities while still recognizing that education can be delivered in a more cost-effective, efficient manner. Let’s face it, universities which refuse to innovate may become dinosaurs.
Colleges in the Lone Star State are not poor. Texas universities are among the richest in the country.
Too often, it is the bureaucracy which are standing in the way of innovation…a bureaucracy more designed to perpetuate their own tenure and comfort rather than serve students.
Rock the Ivory Tower is a project of Americans for Prosperity because we realize that many universities are resistant to change. But universities should be the laboratories for change. We can make universities more affordable by encouraging professors to teach more hours, better utilizing the facilities and providing more online learning.
Dr. Thomas K. Lindsay, head of the Center for Higher Education at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, is a leader in higher ed reform which will provide greater access to higher education while also controlling the cost. Here is a paper he wrote on the Future of Face Higher Education – Online Learning in the New Economy.
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