O'Malley couldn't hold tuition freeze any longer
Gov. Martin O'Malley's three-year tuition freeze was admirable, but it was beginning to be counterproductive. As I wrote in September, under the resource constraints caused by flat tuition, Maryland universities have been obliged to reject more and more students just when people need the low-cost education state facilities can provide.
Salisbury and Towson have been rejecting almost half the kids who apply. Meanwhile the community colleges are jammed. We're rationing education, and that's not good for anybody.
For the September column I asked O'Malley spokesman Rick Abbruzzese if tuition might go up. "For the next school year, I think it is possible," he said. Today the Associated Press's Brian Witte reports that O'Malley would support a 3 percent tuition increase. I suspect the Regents probably want something more like 5 percent.
Comments
You've fallen prey to the Washington Monument Syndrome. State schools could have accommodated those students, had they wanted to. Instead, they used them as political hostages to press for higher tuition.
You're under the mistaken impression that the purpose of state schools is to educate people. It's actually to provide high-paying jobs for the armies of non-educational personnel that account for most of the costs of attending college.
Posted by: Baltimoron | January 14, 2010 2:58 PM