Bye Bye, Jeremy

You will be sorely missed.

The Other Side of the Coin

The previous post pointed out that tuition increases can be blamed more on the exponential growth of the administrative costs of public universities, rather than on dwindling government contributions.  However, that is not to say that there is not a widespread belief among conservatarian politicians that government should get out of the education business, and leave that essential activity to the invisible hand.

In Illinois, an influential state legislator has floated a proposal to "start a serious discussion" about university privatization.  This comes on the heels of what Forbes has described as a "stealth privatization" campaign around the US.  All of this can be seen as a deliberate turning away from the principles of an egalitarian society that drove the idea of making university education available to all deserving students regardless of means or background.  Looking at the way the government of Alberta has handled the advanced education budget, it seems clear that our own politicians harbour similar views.

My youngest is in high school, with high grades and a full RESP, so I'm not worried about his education no matter what.  But I worry a lot about talented kids coming up who may find themselves priced out of a university education.

Contribution of Administrative Bloat to Tuition Inflation

Here's a article by Paul Campos in today's NYT discussing the role of uncontrolled administrative growth in the rise of public universities' tuition.

Update:  Campos contributes to an interesting blog called Lawyers Guns & Money, that I have linked to in several previous posts.  Here is a post by him related to his NYT piece, that includes graphs and further analysis.