House Bill Aims to Defuse Skyrocketing College Tuition Costs
by Jim Brown and Jody Brown
November 12, 2003
(AgapePress) - A California congressman wants universities to curb their high spending habits. He is calling on the institutions to eliminate unnecessary spending on projects unrelated to education.The University of Cincinnati is spending $200 million on a main street with outdoor cafes and a mall-style student center. Meantime, the University of Vermont plans to spend $70 million on a new student center with a pub, a ballroom, a theater, and an artificial pond for wintertime skating.
These and other campus projects have Republican Representative Buck McKeon asking a simple question: Why?
"These are wonderful things [but] I don't really know exactly what they have to do with education -- and the student fees end up paying for these things," McKeon explains. "When [universities and colleges] tell me that they can't control their costs -- and I see things like this being built -- I wonder what happened to the days of Socrates and Plato when people really were interested in education."
The congressman has introduced a bill that would penalize schools that raise tuition must faster than the rate of inflation. While the Affordability in Higher Education Act would not give the federal government any role in setting college costs, it would -- beginning in the year 2011 -- allow the government the option of removing direct subsidies to institutions that repeatedly engage in exorbitant tuition hikes. He cites as an example one university's excuse to raise tuition rates.
"Ohio State University is spending $140 million to build what its peers enviously refer to as 'a Taj Mahal,'" he says. McKeon describes the facility as a 650,000-square-foot complex featuring kayaks and canoes, indoor batting cages, ropes courses, massages, "and a climbing wall big enough for 50 students to scale simultaneously."
McKeon says it is "unacceptable" that the college cost crisis is threatening to push higher education beyond the reach of low- and middle-income students. He is hopeful the Affordability in Higher Education Act will reverse that trend.
Last year, the federal government contributed $65 billion to higher education in the form of outright grants, Pell grants, and student loans. In September, Republicans in the House released a report that declared the nation's system for higher education is in crisis as a result of "exploding tuition hikes that reflect a lack of accountability and transparency in the system."
