80th Legislature: Craddick Does Not Favor Tuition Deregulation

Attention college students: Tom Craddick is your enemy. Your mortal enemy.

He is a disciple of tuition deregulation. And, he thinks Texas colleges should be able to raise tuition whenever they damned well please just because they need new revenue.

Of course, like most “deregulation” efforts in Texas, pretty much as soon as the thing that was regulated is deregulated, people decide it was better off regulated after all.

It’s been four years since the Lege deregulated college tuition, leaving the decisions of what to charge students up to each individual institution. He was for it then, he’s for it now:

“I still am for it. And I’m for putting additional money into higher education. It’s the key to development for us, long term in this state, as far as economic growth,” Craddick said in an interview Monday with the Austin American-Statesman.

By now, you’ve noticed that I’ve tried to everyone who reads this blogs (and have done so until I’m pretty much blue in the face) that all the money you can pour into higher ed is useless until you make higher ed more accessible. Tuition re-regulation is the only way to do that.
On the other side of the Dome, Lt. Governor Dewhurst simply expects universities to hold off on their increases as more money is poured into the system.

Fat. Chance.

The average annual tuition and fees at a public university in this state is $5,327. While that may not be the highest in the nation, neither is the median income in this state. So, it adds up to a formula that is creating a wall barring people from public education.

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