Thursday, January 11, 2007

But will it increase retention? 

A new bill tries to allow students the chnace to lock in their tuition rates.: "
Buesgens' legislation mandates that all colleges and universities that receive state funding must guarantee a stable tuition cost for a four-year or two-year degree. If a student un-enrolls for a period of time, that student would have to re-enroll at the new tuition cost. A student who fails to complete the degree within the four-year time line would be charged the new tuition rate for the fifth year and beyond.

'The worst thing we could do is to simply buy down the cost of a degree,' Buesgens continued. 'Any time government masks the true cost of a product or service from the user, it defeats economic logic and ensures ever escalating costs. There will come a time of reckoning and it will surely be at the taxpayers' expense.'"
This transfers the risk of increased educational "costs" from the student and his/her parents to the institution. It would end up giving institutions an incentive to hold those costs down, I think.

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