Tuition or Higher Taxes

The California tuition battle continues unabated. Last week 3,000 students from the state university marched through the streets of Sacramento for a protest rally at the capitol plaza. There, student and faculty speakers took turns denouncing Governor Ronald Reagan's proposal to impose tuition and cut the budget at both the university and the state colleges. During the rally, the Governor showed up and heard one professor accuse him of seeking to "dismantle California's institutions of higher learning." But Reagan earned applause with his earnest offer to discuss the schools' problems "around the table in an atmosphere of good will." This week the regents will meet in Santa Barbara for another round of debate on the future of the university's complicated fiscal affairs.

Emotional arguments about whether a public university should charge tuition --and if so, how much--are not confined to California. In 1965 there were student protests at the University of Minnesota when its regents voted to raise tuition $60 a year. Equally strong debates have arisen in recent years over proposals to impose tuition on students of the traditionally free City University of New York, which is supported by both state and city tax money. On the question of tuition, says Vice-Chancellor Harry Levy, "it's essentially a matter of principle--like Old Glory."

Political Muscle. Today, only a handful of public universities survive without tuition: California, C.U.N.Y., Connecticut, Kentucky and Idaho. The median tuition charged state residents at the 97 schools of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Col leges reached $333 in 1967, compared with $312 last year and less than $200 ten years ago. In addition, most state schools charge a variety of fees (for instance, for athletics and lab courses), which can run as high as $240 a year at California.

Tuition charges generally are highest in the East, where expensive private schools have established the pattern and have the political muscle to influence state legislatures. Some examples of state university tuitions:

Vermont $575 New Hampshire 536 Rutgers (N.J.) 528 Ohio State 450 Maine 400 Minnesota 375 Mississippi 350 Florida 260 Texas 144.

At most schools, tuition charges meet less than 20% of the total cost of instruction. Every year the tuition at public universities inches nearer the level of charges at private schools. Every year, also, there is a widening gap between tuition charges for state residents and those who cross the borders. In effect, outsiders are helping to subsidize local students. Out-of-state tuition at the state schools rose 19.9% in 1965, climbed another 6.5% last year, has reached a median of $782. The number of these schools charging nonresidents more than $900 a year has risen from nine to 33 in the past two years. Vermont, which levies outsiders $1,500, can no longer keep its desired fifty-fifty split between in-state and out-state students.

The school also finds that the nonresidents it attracts lack the desired sociological diversity--most are from prosperous families.

Economic Spectrum. The fast-rising charges mean that most public-university students must now work part-time or seek scholarship help to stay in school. This reflects the fact that the public colleges and universities draw students from a far broader range of economic levels than do the private schools--even those that are liberal with scholarships. More than a fourth of the freshmen at private universities come from families whose annual incomes exceed $20,000, while 27.8% of public freshmen come from families earning less than $6,000. Officials of public universities are overwhelmingly convinced that tuition must be kept low if the schools are to remain accessible to a broad economic spectrum of the population.

For state legislatures and boards of regents, the rising cost of education resolves itself into an immediate question: whether to raise tuition or raise taxes. Underlying the economic issue, however, are a host of so far unanswered questions about the future of higher education in the U.S. What is the relationship of public and private universities? Should the cost of higher education be borne primarily by families of students who benefit most, or should society as a whole bear the burden? Is higher education a privilege or a democratic right? In many ways, the arguments seem much like those of a century ago, when the nation was grappling with the question of free public high schools.

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