The Roanoke Slant

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Roanoke Times, 7-1-12, Pg Horiz-1: State budget disappoints VT leaders.
“Tech will see an anemic 3% increase over last year in state support for its general education budget, which covers instructional expenses”.
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13 Million People out of work, the economy growing at 1.7% (less than the increase in population growth), individuals, states and the US government are borrowing money in order to pay daily expenses; all this financial stress and in the view of the editors of the RT, giving VT an “anemic” 3% increase in taxpayer money over last year is a bad thing because its too little!
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Not mentioned are the actual numbers involved. VTs new budget is $1.2 BILLION an increase of +3.9% over last year.
http://m.vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2012/06/060412-bov-overview.html
Apparently there are 28,650 enrolled students at VT.
http://www.vt.edu/about/factbook/student-overview.html
The VT budget divided by number of students = $41,885 per student per year.
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Why not one word about reducing costs and implementing sound financial management processes? Perhaps the Editors of the RT should share with VT how they have reduced costs, laid-off staff, and made difficult decisions in order to remain in business!
Oh right – VT is not a business – it’s a government-sponsored-monopoly that can simply increase tuition and get more tax money without making any visible significant cost reduction efforts.
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The RT Bus. Pg-6 Color of Money: “Weigh options for saving for kids’ college education” contains some poignant thoughts as an adjunct to this sad and anemic VT story. “My thought is that any extra money will go to college savings for the children, but since I will be so close to retirement myself, I need to have that house paid off or I will have to go live with them in their dorms”.
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Student loans are now a bigger national financial problem than home mortgages. The government (taxpayers) are massively “underwriting, subsidizing and forgiving” student loans and Congress just extended subsidizing low interest rates for students.
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At what point are the taxpayers, politicians and the media going to start to demand that colleges get their financial houses in order so that they can reduce tuitions and tax subsidies and make college affordable and sustainable again?
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Sustainability is now an environmental buzz-word. Let’s co-opt that term to help get a focus on the non-sustainable path of our institutions of higher education.
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2011/07/virginia-college-tuition-runaway-train.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2009/06/college-new-welfare-state.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2007/11/feed-hungry-beasts.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2006/04/vt-tuition.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2006/01/expensive-textbooks.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2005/04/tuition-explosion_03.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2005/03/vt-costs-skyrocketing.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2005/02/freedom-for-public-colleges.html
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