Michigan state senator Mark Huizenga introduced legislation last week to mandate a tuition freeze at Michigan’s 15 public universities and 28 public community colleges. The rationale, according to Huizenga, was to make higher education more affordable.
Michigan’s community colleges and universities can make attendance more affordable anytime they want to. But the path to affordability is not through a tuition freeze. Instead, these institutions should look hard at cutting their expenses. Reducing a public institution’s expenditures is a better, more reliable way ensure that the cost of attendance remains affordable for students and their families.
For example, cutting energy expenditures by replacing end-of-life heating and cooling equipment, low-quality windows and doors, and expensive lighting, as well as installing solar arrays and/or wind energy generators, could meaningfully help reduce the cost of attendance.
Restricting the expansion of staff would also help reduce the students’ overall cost of attendance, since up to 80% of a higher learning institution’s costs are directly related to staffing levels . (WCC could limit the number of Vice Presidents on the payroll based on enrollment, for example. Because, at some point, someone has to admit that a mid-sized community college simply doesn’t need a dozen Vice Presidents.)
Undone or incomplete maintenance is extremely expensive and consumes a lot of financial resources that could otherwise reduce attendance costs. The Legislature could require that publicly funded community colleges and universities eliminate their maintenance backlog or restrict their maintenance backlog to no more than 1%-2% of the institution’s overall budget. By insisting that maintenance on campus infrastructure be performed on time, community colleges and universities could significantly reduce their capital costs.
Tuition freeze is not the only way to reduce cost of attendance
One way in which community colleges could keep tuition low is by using a voter approve bond-and-millage approach to funding capital projects. Some bond buyers require public borrowers to reserve portions of their general fund dollars to ensure that there is sufficient cash to repay notes. This is more common when the notes are backed by revenue-generating activities. By asking the voters for their financial support, community colleges can avoid having to tap the general fund to pay for bond debt. This reduces the cost of attendance for students.
A tuition freeze isn’t the only way – and may not even be the best way – to control the cost of attendance for college students. But the legislature can require publicly funded colleges and universities to eliminate wasteful spending and better control their expenses. It may come to that if university regents and community colleges trustees refuse to practice the good fiscal oversight they were elected or appointed to perform.
Photo Credit: Jennifer Pack , via Flickr
