Say Anything Blog

Apparently the thing that impresses them is that they didn’t think there was another way to give more money to the irresponsible North Dakota Higher Education system.

Last week the governor announced the first phase of a higher education tuition support plan to make college more affordable to the state’s neediest students. It’s a good idea that recognizes real need and identifies at least 11,000 students who could benefit. When combined with the federal Pell Grant program, the governor’s Aid for College Tuition-North Dakota will cover most of the cost of tuition for eligible students.

The governor’s two-part student support proposal deserves enthusiastic support, even from his political antagonists. After all, even the most unrepentant partisans should recognize what’s good for all North Dakotans.

What strikes me is that the Forum and other state newspapers sounded just this way a year ago when the governor got a 21% increase in Higher Education funding in the budget that took effect last October.  Apparently we were supposed to believe that 21% more state money would hold the line on tuition increases.

Well it didn’t.  The 2006 to 2007 tuition at the University of North Dakota was $5,792; 2007 to 2008 was $6,130 and the upcoming year (2008 to 2009) is $6,514.  That works out to 5.8% in the first year of the higher funding and 6.25% in the second year.  You can see this is merely an extension of the trend; 2000-2001: $3,088; 2001-2002 $3,261; 2002-2003: $3,362; 2004-2005: $4,156; 2005-2006 $4,828.  I don’t have the 2006 to 2007 tuition so if anyone has it please post it in the comments. 
The only conclusion to be had is that giving the University system more money makes them want to spend MORE money.

Now, only a year later, the states newspapers want to push the massive increase in funding that they got from the legislative session down the memory hole.  Face it the Hoeven budget was a complete failure.  Now he’s got another plan to throw forty million at the problem another way. 

All this is going to do is to empower the schools to raise tuition.  After all the students won’t feel the bite as much with this extra money coming in.  Last year the schools exempted professors’ kids from half of the tuition.  I heard they were able to find budget cuts to pay for that.  However they need more budget to educate everyone else.

Now if Governor Hoeven were to say that the only increase for higher education in his upcoming budget would be this forty million I could maybe see going along with it.  However I’m thinking that in addition to this new spending he’s going to want to fund the universities directly by a massive amount of money.  The Board of Higher Education wants a 53% increase in funding.  I’m thinking that Governor spend-a-lot is going to do his best to give it to them. 

You can’t fix an overspending problem by throwing more money at the overspenders.  They will never have so much money they aren’t able to spend more.