by James A. Bacon

Let’s give a polite golf clap to the University of Virginia. After getting a $3 million boost in state support in the new FY 2017 budget, the Board of Trustees has scaled back its planned 3% tuition increase for continuing in-state students to 1.5%, reports the Daily Progress. The planned 10% increase for incoming state students will be trimmed to 8.5%.

After years of relentless tuition increases, the action comes as a welcome break to Virginia parents. The 1.5% adjustment still exceeds the rate of inflation, which was close to o.5% between 2015 and 2016, but it’s in line with recent increases in household incomes. (The median household income figures for 2015 aren’t available, but the figure increased about 1.8% between 2013 and 2014.)

“The University of Virginia’s decision is a direct result of good governance by both state and university leaders,” said House Speaker Howell, R-Stafford in a press release. “The General Assembly made significant investments in higher education aimed at improving access and affordability for Virginia families and UVA responded decisively by cutting its tuition increase in half.”

Howell said the General Assembly deserves credit for coughing up $78 million more for higher education than Gov. Terry McAuliffe had included in his original budget proposal. “The House of Delegates led the effort this year to increase funding for higher education, resulting in $120 million specifically to help hold costs down for Virginia families, who continue to struggle with the ever-increasing cost of college.”

Bacon’s bottom line: Howell’s statement is fascinating. To me it shows how the Republican Party of Virginia has given up any pretext of driving fundamental reform of state-run institutions, and has evolved instead into the party that panders to the rural and suburban middle class. Thus, rightly observing that the middle class parents feel crushed by the rising cost of a college education, the entry ticket into a middle-class lifestyle for their children, the Republican answer is to increase the public subsidy without strings or conditions. That is essentially the same solution proposed by President Obama on the national level — increase the availability of Pell grants and student loans.

That wasn’t always the case. I remember how soaring college tuition was an issue during the Allen administration between 1994 and 1998. (Yeah, I’m that old). I can’t recall whether the General Assembly cut or increased state funding back then, but I do remember how Gov. George Allen pushed the idea of restructuring higher ed. There was a recognition that publicly assisted colleges and universities had obligations to make hard choices: by re-engineering processes, cutting administration, or pruning academic programs that were no longer relevant or suffered declining enrollment. While the State Council for Higher Education in Virginia does exercise some oversight — mainly over the expansion into new programs — I don’t see anyone pushing hard for those kinds of reforms today. Much is given to universities but little is asked in return.

With the exception of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities, which are struggling for relevance and survival, and perhaps the community colleges, which have maintained a focus on job training, the priority of Virginia colleges and universities is on erecting new buildings, hiring more renowned faculty, bolstering scientific research, recruiting students with higher SAT scores and launching new programs. They are not driven by profit; they are driven by a hunger for prestige. And they compete against other institutions also seeking to enhance their prestige. There is no finish line, just an endless, open-ended competition in which public subsidies and student loans feed the beast.

Higher ed is out of control, and the only solutions the political class can devise are bigger state subsidies and more generous student loans. So, while I regard UVa’s tuition decision as a minor tactical victory for college affordability, the Board of Visitors inevitably will come back in later  years with new, grandiose plans that require higher tuition and fees. We are nowhere near winning the war of college affordability.