Paging Art Woolf

(who, by the way, is goofing off in Hawaii)

The Freeps publishes an editorial bemoaning the high -- and rising -- cost of higher education.  No surprise there.  A default key probably exists somewhere in the paper's headquarters so that on a slow day, it can do a brow-wrinkler about how much it costs to go to college.  Year to year, only the actual numbers change:

At the University of Vermont, in-state tuition has gone up 48 percent in the past decade, room and board 52 percent and fees a whopping 288 percent, in a period when consumer prices rose by about 30 percent. The total bill for the current academic year comes to just over $20,000. Nationally, The Associated Press reported that college costs have nearly doubled in the past decade, and that total outstanding student loans rose from $38 billion in 1995 to $85 billion last year.

    There is, no doubt, an interesting discussion to be had on how it seems that the more deeply the national government gets into financing higher education -- both directly and through "affordable" loans that leave people in hock right up until they are eligible for Social Security -- the more it costs to go to college.  Could there possibly be a correlation?  We'll wait for Art to return from paradise to answer that question for us.

    Meanwhile, there is this interesting paragraph in the Freeps thumb sucker:

The state is working to keep young graduates from leaving the state, and trying to lure back those who have left. The state has one of the oldest populations in the nations, and the lack of young people, especially highly educated workers, could hurt the economy. Yet graduates with hundreds of dollars in monthly payments on their college and graduate school loans would find it difficult to afford the state's high housing costs on the lower-than-averages wages they would find in Vermont.

    The high cost of housing in Vermont seems, then, to be a more immediate threat to the state's economic well-being than the high cost of a UVM education.   The really hard part is ... we can't hand that one off to the Feds.  And for now, we can't expect much from Montpelier, either. 

    A pro-growth agenda -- lower taxes, less regulation, etc. -- seems to be out of the question.  Which leaves us with hand-wringing and a feeble national security argument:

College affordability is, at its core, an economic issue, and a strong economy is a matter of national security. That should be reason enough to further boost aid. Vermont -- and the nation -- can't risk letting a college education become unaffordable.

On second thought, Art, maybe you ought to stay in Hawaii.
 

Comments

[George Cross]

The easiest and best way to keep young people in Vermont and to lure others to the state is through student loan forgiveness or assistance with the repayment of loans. There are at least four economic benefits to such a plan. 1. More students would complete a degree as they would have a better idea of how to repay their loans. More students staying in college will help the institutions' cash flow. 2. By targeting hard to fill jobs, employers both private and public would benefit with well qualified workers. 3. Plus, young folks would be in a better position to become homeowners. 4. Since these young people would be of child bearing age, we might even see an upward tick in the state's population.

Scholarships simply take away a bit of the initial financial pain. Loan repayment programs have a much more long term and broader economic impact.

[Gregg Ballou]

You won't get young professionals in VT, and if you do they won't stay for long. Here's why:
1. One person might find an OK professional job, but chances are their spouse won't be so lucky. At VT wages(yes we are talking about professional wages in VT) one job per family isn't enough.
2. The schools suck. Believe what you want but professionals with educations from competitive universities are not going to be happy with the VT school system.
3. Read #1 and #2 again. Farewell and adieu my fair Spanish ladies...