Say Anything Blog

Clowns.

State higher education officials say tuition and fees at North Dakota’s public colleges and universities went up at a rate much less than the national average.

They cite a new report from The College Board saying the average published price of in-state tuition and fees at public four-year colleges increased 6.5 percent for the 2009-10 academic year and 7.3 percent at public two-year colleges.

University officials say that in North Dakota, four-year university in-state tuition and fees increased 3.5 percent, and two-year tuition and fees increased 0.8 percent.

These clowns are trotting out this snapshot to make themselves look like they’ve been financially responsible.  They haven’t.

They’ve been nothing but wild allowing for tuition increases.  Since I have the UND tuition for most of the decade I’ll use that to illustrate what’s going on in the state.

In the academic year 2000 to 2001 tuition at UND was $3088 for a semester.  Currently it’s $6727.  That means the State Board of Higher Education (clowns) has overseen a 118% rise in tuition.  The inflation rate over the same period was 25%.  That means the State Board of Higher Education gouged our young people by raising the real price of their service by about 90%.

The State Legislature foolishly gave the Higher Education system a 53% increase in general fund support in the last two bienniums.  During that same period UND has raised their tuition by 16 percent.  Inflation during that time was more like 4%. 

I don’t think other states were able to increase their state support of higher education in the last year like we were able to.  There was no excuse to increase tuition a penny let alone the three and an half that they did.  Inflation was non existent last year.

So even with a massive increase in state funding the greedy Board of Higher Education has increased tuition four times the rate of inflation.  These guys should just drop the act that they’re responsible stewards of the higher education system.

The State Board of Higher Education is appointed by the Governor by the way.  Ultimately he’s the one responsible for run away spending and other misdeeds on the college campuses.