| New Burdern of More Taxes on our Future |
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Editorial
April 12, 2008
Courier-Journal Newspaper
Taxing tuition
Kentucky lawmakers who claim they didn't raise taxes this year may be fooling themselves. But they aren't fooling the students at the state's public universities, or anyone helping those students foot the bill.
University of Kentucky was the first to reveal its plans for increasing tuition next year, and the number came in at 9 percent. That means costs will be bumped up another $717.50 in the fall, putting the total bill for instate tuition, housing, dining and mandatory fees at $13,572.50 a year.
Technically speaking, of course, that extra $717.50 is not a tax. But it feels like a targeted tax-increase on college students and their families.
And even if it isn't the kind of a tax that gets rabid anti-taxers like Grover Norquist stirred up, by what flaky reasoning is it supposed to be more acceptable than some of the minor tax increases lawmakers could have chosen instead?
For example, the Democratic-controlled House passed -- but then the Republican-controlled Senate refused to agree on -- an additional 25-cent-per-pack tax on cigarettes. Since everyone pays higher health-care bills because of smokers, it would make sense for lawmakers to give smokers an incentive to quit. But instead they gave economically deprived students an incentive to quit college, by putting the equivalent of a $717.50 tax on tuition.
Worse, this 9 percent increase follows another 9 percent increase, which followed increases of 12.9, 12.5, 13.6 and 14.4 percent. In the space of 12 years, lawmakers have helped cause tuition costs at UK to triple -- in this state where the percentage of adults with a bachelor's degree or higher is already 25 percent lower than in the United States as a whole.
This wasn't just stupid reasoning. It probably will do actual damage to real people. The 2000 Census showed the economic difference a college degree makes: A person with a bachelor's degree earns about $22,000 a year more than someone who enters the workforce after high school. Those who get a professional degree can count on yet another $57,000 a year.
As a report by the Council on Postsecondary Education put it, "At a time when a college degree is ever more important, the financial effort to attend college is becoming greater."
Lawmakers, in their determination to not increase taxes, did something worse. They increased the barriers to economic success
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