by James A. Bacon
The rocket-like ascent of college tuition in Virginia continues unabated, with tuition and fees across the state’s higher ed system averaging six percent in the 2015-2016 academic year, according to a new State Council of Higher Education in Virginia (SCHEV) report. That compares to an inflation rate of less than 1.0% between 2015 and 2014 and it outpaces the meager gains in average household income.
Prime offenders: Virginia’s elite universities, the University of Virginia and the College of William & Mary, continuing to parlay their pricing power into higher tuition and fees at a remarkably aggressive rate.
As always, the universities turn to the excuse that state budget cuts made them do it. And, as the SCHEV report makes clear, the past year was a budgetary roller coaster and General Fund support for higher ed was cut by $45 million in each year of the biennium, for a total of 2.1%. But that accounts for only one percentage point of the 6% increase this year. Inflation accounts for another percentage point. That still leaves an unjustifiable increase of 4%.
Meanwhile, the indentured servitude of America’s college-educated youth, especially those whose parents aren’t affluent enough to foot the bill, continues apace. Student debt is accumulating as rapidly as the national debt, now exceeding $1.3 trillion.
If there is a consolation to this dismal news, according to WalletHub, one of the nation’s leading purveyors of listicles, Virginia students are less debt-ridden than the national average. Compiling metrics on the percentage of students with debt, the average size of that debt, debt as a percentage of income, post-college employment rates and delinquent loans, Virginia’s college students rank 6th best off in the country. That is a testimony to the fact that, relatively speaking, Virginia institutions of higher ed are less rapaciously exploitative than their peers in other states. (Yes, that’s the sound of one hand clapping.)