Georgia Lawmaker Joins Battle to Combat Rising College Tuition Costs
by By Jim Brown
November 19, 2003
(AgapePress) - A Georgia congressman is criticizing the spending habits of public universities which he says are approving enormous salaries for their presidents while imposing large tuition hikes on students.Being a college president can be a pretty lucrative job these days. The leaders of four private universities are now getting compensation packages worth more than $800,000. At twelve public colleges, the top officials are scheduled to earn more than $500,000 this year. And in a specific example, the president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York makes nearly $900,000 a year, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Republican Representative Jack Kingston is angered that many universities are raising tuition costs to offset those salaries. Universities, he says, "squander money like drunken sailors."
"For the most part, they've taken government spending and inefficiency to a new extreme," the Georgia lawmaker says, "and they're totally oblivious to the fact that that is hard-earned tax money, largely on the back of the middle class."
He adds that the focus in academia seems to have changed from learning to earning. He says college presidents appear to place less emphasis today on what a person has published or researched, and more on "who ... you know and how much money can you raise."
Kingston is urging taxpayers to protest financial decisions and attitudes such as these that are resulting in higher tuition costs for students. "Parents, as taxpayers who are funding these academic institutions, need to speak up and out to their legislature, to the government, and just raise some good old-fashioned Cain about it," he says.
Kingston is backing a bill sponsored by Congressman Buck McKeon of California which would penalize universities that raise tuition must faster than the rate of inflation.
