The Roanoke Slant

Roanoke Times, 11/7/07, Pg Va 8: Editorial: Newly elected candidates should support massive increases in funding for higher education; UVa tuition going from $6,100 to $13,900 by by 2013.
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Why doesn’t it occur to the editorial board of the Roanoke Times, that the first step in addressing the run-away costs at the universities in Virginia is to do a comprehensive study as to WHY this is happening!
Sending a steady stream of ever increasing money (public and private) is just reinforcing really BAD behavior.
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There is no other entity that has had such an explosion of costs over the past 20 years. Graduates are exiting college with $100,000 in college loans.
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This RT position is just the latest in a long string of similar articles (following) that indicate that the RT’s editorial board just doesn’t care what the costs are, just keep raising taxes and tuitions and feed the hungry beast! Socialism is like that!
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Roanoke Times, 3/19/05, Pg VA 1, 8: Tuition at community colleges to increase; have increased by 83% since 2002.-Once again The Editor presents these massive increases in college costs without one word about the underlying elements of cost and what is causing them and what options are available to stop the hemorrhaging. Apparently college cost is no problem for The Editor and his associates and media partners. His answer: don't ask, don't tell: just raise taxes and fees!-http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2005/03/vt-costs-skyrocketing.html
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Roanoke Times, 3/12/05, Pg VA1: The Va Tech Board to consider a 9 percent raise in tuition and fees.-Nowhere is there one word about why costs are rising more than three times faster than inflation. A real "news"paper would make it their business to help taxpayers, parents and legislators understand the reasons for this runaway financial situation. If "news"papers aren't doing that -- what are they doing?-Click for prior Public College funding blog items:-http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2005/02/freedom-for-public-colleges.html
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The Paper, 2/22/05, pg 10: The College Bill article is one of an ongoing series of articles that is positive about freeing VA public colleges from some state oversight requirements.-This change is supported by The Paper and others to somehow help control tuition costs in some magical way. I have not seen in any of the articles a definition of the problem. A real "news" organization would publish data on the education costs per year for the last 10 years and would relate that data to "the rate of inflation plus increase in student population". Then they would point out where and why the costs are escalating above and beyond these parameters. Then they would show how this Bill will help solve the problem. Sure sounds like a lot of real journalism work would be required! By the way, whatever happened to the economy of scale? As more students are added, do you not reduce unit cost? And what about the payback and cost reductions from big investments in technology that the taxpayers have already paid for?
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2005/02/freedom-for-public-colleges.html
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