Earlier this month, President Obama sat down with Tumblr CEO David Karp to discuss higher education. During the Q&A the President blamed state legislatures for rising tuition costs, using their budgets to fund prisons or other initiatives he deemed, “not as productive.”
How state legislatures use their budget may be a problem, but not one that’s easily fixed by a slight budget adjustment or simple relocation. The prison population has more than quadrupled since 1980 when President Obama attended college, and that increased cost has largely been taken on by the states themselves, with over 80 percent of prisoners being housed in state penitentiaries.
Unlike the federal government, most state legislatures do not have the privilege and flexibility of spending more than they take in. Each state has a requirement that their budget is balanced, which limits what they can spend money on. When federal actions take effect, the states have the burdensome task of determining what the costs of those actions will be and allocating a portion of their budget to those costs.
President Obama didn’t just inherit a federal government that charged states more than they could handle. He has done his best in increasing the costs states have to pay for Washington’s pet projects. First among those is none other than Obamacare. One of Obamacare’s main mandates is that states are to increase medicaid coverage to over 21.3 million new applicants. In 2011, state governments already spent almost a quarter of their budget on Medicaid. Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion didn’t begin until 2013, so state budgets have only more burdensome federal mandates to look forward to.
But the high cost of college isn’t due to a lack of taxpayer subsidies. When state or federal government subsidizes tuition, it becomes “cheaper” for students to attend, however, when more students attend college, universities must either increase admittance or increase tuition to limit demand — a basic market realignment. Because of this, the subsidies themselves are driving tuition up. While the difference in cost for subsidized students might be minimal, the rest of the student body must cope with paying out of pocket. Even those students who receive federal loans–while technically subsidized–still must pay back their increased tuition later in life.
President Obama lays the blame for increased student tuition at the feet of state legislatures. But due to the actions of the federal government as a whole — and particularly the Obama Administration — states can no longer afford to subsidize public universities, nor should they. If we truly want higher education to be an attainable goal for our students, let’s stop forcing tuition up with social programs that are only thought out in the short-term. Education is an investment in our future, and our policies should reflect that.
