Tuition Cap Requirement for Federal Funding

Description

Colleges will be required to cap tuition prices in order to receive federal funding. If a school wants to increase their tuition prices, they have to keep it under a certain limit in order to continue receiving government funding.

How it Addresses the Problem

This solution would help drastically lower prices without putting colleges through extreme budget cuts by providing supplemental funding for those that comply. It will also create a butterfly effect that will decrease the price of private colleges as well over time.

Benefits of the solution

More students can gain access to college. In the short run, this could decrease the price of only a few public schools, but seeing that the quality of education can still stay decent due to the help they are receiving from the government, competition will increase, driving prices of other schools down in the long run, making the entire college market more affordable and more fair.

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Supporters

Public post-secondary institutions, who are the primary recipients of the aid, would support given that they are being given more money by the government to help actually lower the costs and to improve the scope and quality of the education they provide
Students would gladly pay less for post secondary institutions and thus would support the move to lower tuition costs
- - - Parents as they are most likely seeking to aid their students in enrolling in post secondary education or have plans to enroll their students in post secondary education and do not want to have to pay as much
Employers as they will have a larger selection of more educated workers that are able to complete their tasks more efficiently

Disadvantages of the solution

Schools can and will try to make back the money they lost from tuition caps. While the sticker price decreases, schools can still take away financial aid or increase program fees. The main concern is that less tuition will mean budget cuts, leading to lower quality education and amenities, polarizing the college market even more

Opponents

Private post-secondary institutions as they most likely will not be able to lower the prices in order to receive funding due to strategies of attracting the wealthy that can pay full price through luxuries that drastically raise the cost of education and campus maintenance as well as cost of personnel (Goodkind). It could also be seen as a slightly anti-private business action.

Students who see the price cap as a way of limiting the quality of the education they receive.

Source

How to Overcome Opponents

The cap, while it may hurt private institutions more, also includes more funding for schools who can meet the cap, allowing them to lower prices without having to cut profits (Andreae).

The cap is in no way preventing students from enrolling in private institutions nor is it encouraging lower standards of education as with the extra funding, it allows the school to maintain its quality while dropping the prices so it is more affordable for more students, overall increasing the quantity of well educated citizens which is beneficial for the country as a whole.

Implementation

This would require either a bill to make it a federal level requirement for public post secondary institutions (and cannot target private institutions as that is an infringement of private business) or a grant through fiscal federalism that specifies that the grant is only given if the price is below a certain price (which would be determined based on yearly inflation, etc.) From there, this would replace existing federal funding for post-secondary institutions in exchange for the new policy, only giving funding to institutions that meet the requirements. The Department of Education, once a bill is passed or a grant is given, would manage the calculation and distribution of funds.

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