My Way News – College presidents wary of Obama cost-control plan
Once again, government money comes with strings attached. Why not stop subsidizing and let market forces take over to optimize tuition rates? Operating budget at my local community college is only paid one third by students. State pays a third and feds pay a third. To complcate things, a four year degree from there isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. So who’s benefitting?
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“We are putting colleges on notice,” Obama told an arena packed with cheering students. “You can’t assume that you’ll just jack up tuition every single year. If you can’t stop tuition from going up, then the funding you get from taxpayers each year will go down.”
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Obama is targeting only a small part of the financial aid picture: the $3 billion known as campus-based aid that flows through college administrators to students. He is proposing to increase that amount to $10 billion and change how it is distributed to reward schools that hold down costs and ensure that more poor students complete their education.
The bulk of the more than $140 billion in federal grants and loans goes directly to students and would not be affected.
The average in-state tuition and fees at four-year public colleges this school year rose 8.3 percent and with room and board now exceed $17,000 a year, according to the College Board.
Publius Prime 