When is enough, enough?

October 22, 2003 5:50 AM

The College Board today released their annual report looking at the costs of college tuitions. Once again this year the report finds that the costs for students are rising. A group of students at the University of Maryland, College Park said enough is enough and have formed a political action committee to fight the state's refusal to increase funding to public colleges in the state, and curb tuition increases. The Student Citizen Action Networkis the first of it's kind, they have a goal of raising over $50,000 dollars, and they have already made substantial progress in their first few days.
posted by mhaw (6 comments total)

Wait just a second here...

Isn't Bush the "education president". I seem to recall he is, although I might be on crack.

That being said, I'm sure as he reads this (as you know he hits mefi first thing every day) that he'll send a directive to send some of the Iraq support money to the states to help fund education. Right? Right?
posted by damnitkage at 6:34 AM on October 22, 2003

Sorry, I don't have time to read this; I'm going out to protest my university's heavy-handed treatment of its employee unions.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 7:44 AM on October 22, 2003

I think the only way to control costs is to let students graduate in less time, having taken less classes. Otherwise, costs will continue to go up and up and up. Of course, that solution only buys time and doesn't completely reform the systme. But it would be a start, for students who want a degree for the least amount of money possible.
posted by cell divide at 9:10 AM on October 22, 2003

I think the only way to control costs is to let students graduate in less time, having taken less classes

I think that is part of the solution. However, I think this problem is caused by our poor K-12 system. They do such a poor job of teaching students that colleges need to fill the gap in their education with more remedial classes and such. It also increases demand for colleges. If our public school system was better, there would be less need for basic remedial courses and it would lessen the number of people going to college, and should drive down the price of going to college.
posted by gyc at 10:53 AM on October 22, 2003

It would be interesting to see, especially from the huge state schools with vast campuses, what percentage of the operating budget of the school wasn't at all related to the type and number of classes being offered, but was related to the type and number of buildings being maintained and used and the resources (human and otherwise) involved in that endeavor. Physical plant costs have got to be crippling at a lot of schools, especially northern schools with old buildings with suspect insulation.

Perhaps the answers don't just lie on the academic side, perhaps the answers must involve modernization of campus facilities, improvement of old buildings to increase energy efficiency and minimize maintenance requirements, minimization of growing campus sprawl and encouragement distance learning options whenever possible to cut down on usage costs.
posted by Dreama at 11:44 AM on October 22, 2003

I have to agree with gyc. I teach at the community college, and it's amazing how many students think that 1/3, converted to a decimal, is 1.3. Or they've never used negative numbers (though they've all had overdrafts on their bank accounts). Some of these folks have been out of school for 20+ years, which is almost an excuse, but some are fresh outta high school, and can't add two-digit numbers. Unfortunately, I'd guess that at least 10-20% of my fellow students at the "top 10" (what a racket, another topic entirely) school I attended are in the same boat.
posted by notsnot at 8:33 PM on October 22, 2003