One other thing to consider is that cheaper tuition alone does not guarantee greater access to education. Subsidizing tuition solely from the taxpayer means that without major increases in education funding, fewer spots become available over time. This leads to increased competition for those fewer spots and less access for everyone as a whole. Tying tuition increases to inflation helps to lessen this burden on taxpayers, but there is still a limited amount of money to go around for these spaces.
On this note, we focus way too much on forcing people to go to university in this country. There are many forms of post-secondary education from trade school to community college that would be way more useful to providing a strong workforce for our economy. Not everyone can or should go to university, but we need to ensure that if they choose to go that route and have the non-monetary entrance requirements that they should be able to.
|