I don’t know if I could summarize it in a way that does it justice, so I’ll just link to Doghouse Riley’s latest epic post on the subject of the Governor, budgeting, and education. The whole thing is definitely worth a read, but I have to confess to the same reaction when I heard that the Senate Budget Committee was going to have some show trials on the subject of university tuition increases. The General Assembly choked off spending to preserve the Governor’s surplus and, go figure, there were consequences down the line:
So, now the boards of the various state colleges and universities meet to plan their own budgets, and–Keep ahold a’ them reins, Pardner–uniformly raise tuitions across the board. This angers the Governor, and the Senate (i.e. Republican) half of the Legislature, whose Budget committee is apparently now permanently in session, as it hauled in the Presidents of all those Fancy Learnin’ Academies yesterday and demanded Answers! Preliminary word has it that the main answer, Because you fucks fucking fucked our fucking budget and the money’s gotta come from somewhere was not explained to them in exactly that way.
Hypocritical as their show trials may be, I’ll take the surplus over something like what California has.
However, I suppose many people could point out that I’m going about it backwards, because now people in Indiana get to pay for California’s services.
Of course, it would be wonderful if the thought behind tuition increases were that simple. Did you bother to look at the tuition increases for oh, the past 10+ years? Universities have been jacking tuition up (well beyond inflation rates) year after year. This year is just another year in the trend. I think Espich/Kenley/Delph/et al have every right to be angry. Its very tough for Hoosier families to be able to afford these skyrocketing costs.
I think there will always be disagreements how about how to allocate limited tax dollars. Its nice (read: easy) to huff out a few words on a blog about how education is getting the shaft, but there’s literally thousands of demands on our tax dollars. Many of those dollars are spoken for, thanks to our benevolent federal government, long before our state legislators get a chance to decide what to do with them. By and large the portion of the state budget the universities get is pretty good. They carry a lot of clout in the General Assembly, but its quite obvious no dollar amount the legislature can appropriate will ever be “enough.”
In general, universities refuse to make any hard decisions – they’re simply not cutting costs in any meaningful way. They know they have a product that will not see a decrease in demand, even if they raise tuition dramatically year after year.
Finally, no one knows how long this current recession will last. Hopefully your skepticism about preserving the surplus will be proved correct and we’ll all be looking the hard times in the rear view mirror next year. But we have to plan for reality, not hopes and dreams – and keeping a moderate surplus in the bank is a prudent thing to do. Unlike the feds, we can’t beg the Chinese for more cash when we suddenly find ourselves in the hole.
If our legislators had chosen to get publicly indignant about tuition increases in years past, my reaction may well have been different.
My reaction is colored by the past acts of the General Assembly and the Governor in balancing the state budget on the backs of local government, then bragging about their fiscal responsibility and denigrating local officials. So, even if the university officials have some explaining to do, it feels an awful lot like posturing when the Senators get all puffed up like this.
1. Doug, thanks, as always, for your continued, if inexplicable support, though I must say I’m a little concerned about the sort of language you’re using these days.
2. Jason, all that’s preventing Indiana from being California is a relative economic and cultural homogeneity, the absence of a liberal party, and their 30-year head start on pseudo-populist anti-tax schemes.
3. Jon, it may indeed be easy to huff out a few words on a blog, but try doin’ it every day for four years.
And, look, I get this a lot, so: it’s a comedic blog, whose increasingly tiresome gag is that the perpetually ranting author is a middle-aged dyspeptic suffering from logorrhea, chronic indolence, congenital Hoosierism, a distaste for panegyric, and too much time on his hands. In other words, pretty much my opposite. And it centers on politics, and frequently on Indiana, because of who I am. I mean the “author”. And occasionally someone wants to take issue with me about this fact or that interpretation, which is like criticizing NASCAR for being professional wrestling on wheels. It misses the point of the exercise.
You are, of course, correct about the general trend in tuition, which is why I think we’re justified in asking where “Espich/Kenley/Delph/et al” have been up to now, when it’s their fat they suddenly smell cooking. Yes, difficult choices are made. Difficult choices are always made, and this never seems to prevent our politicians or their campaigns from portraying them as simple. It’s not too much to ask–though it is wishful thinking–that the people who make those choices take responsibility for the easily-predicted consequences which, after all, should have factored into the decisions in the first place, no?
Ha, Doghouse you can run your blog however you see fit! And I certainly find your prose (is that how you would describe it?) to be comedic in nature, so I wasn’t taking issue with that…
I’m a recent college grad (Purdue), so I have some idea what happens after several years of the fantasyland known as undergrad. Debt payments to Aunt Sallie Mae! This was an admittedly unknown fact to me while I was in school. Armed with this knowledge, I’m much more inclined to take the universities to task for boosting tuition dramatically, again and again, year after year.
It certainly does smell political (and as you might say if it looks, smells and acts like one…), but that doesn’t take away from the fact that I think they have some valid complaints. Just because they’re politicians with an opportunity to complain loudly to the media doesn’t make their message any less true. I also don’t think the tuition raises were “easily-predicted consequences,” at least in the sense that less funding (more like flat-lined) funding = tuition hikes. The reality is more like: new budget year = tuition hikes. Might as well start complaining now.
Besides, the politicians mentioned in Tully’s article are all in a pretty safe position. They’d be re-elected with or without this “show” – so maybe they actually are concerned?