RE:
http://hnn.us/articles/40317.html
HNN post, Joseph Yannielli, Should the Children of Undocumented
Immigrants Pay More to Go to College?
Let's Get Our Facts Straight
I don't doubt that the nativist lobby will turn up in
due course, but let's get our facts straight first. Lower
division undergraduates don't cost much of anything to support.
Depending on class size, twenty to forty additional students
work out to four additional sections of freshman courses, or about
one or two graduate assistantships, that is, ten to forty students
per assistantship. There are book-keeping issues, such as how you
count the graduate assistant's tuition waiver, but it is very
difficult to justify an estimated cost in excess of $2000 per
freshman per year. Figures as low as $500 may be defensible,
depending on local conditions. Lower division college education is
cheaper to run than high schools, because you leave the
college students to their own devices much more. What colleges and
universities spend money on is the number and variety of people
they have who are engaged in advanced research.
The difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition is pure
profit. It is based on the presumption that people who send
their kids to college out-of-state are ritzy types who can
afford to pay. If you can afford to send your kids to Harvard, but
your kids aren't bright enough that Harvard
wants them, or any other highly selective college, or even the
flagship state university in your own state, you can at
least send them to an unselective state university in
another state, so that they look superior to poorer but
brighter students who go to in-state colleges and live at
home. It's basically the same as the system whereby George W. Bush
got into Yale, only on a lower social level. Places like
Connecticut or Delaware tend to command a premium price
because they are physically proximate to the Ivy league (along the
Northeast Corridor), but not located in slums the way
CUNY or Temple are. Students can get into Boston, New York,
Philadelphia, Baltimore, or Washington on weekends.
Obviously, illegal immigrants aren't rich enough to fall under the
out-of-state category-- there is no reason they should be expected
to pay a "millionaire's tax." Nor are they getting the
benefit of it-- they aren't "going away to school."
Of course, the students the faculty actually wants are likely to
get formal or informal scholarships, and the official tuition rate
does not apply to them. The official tuition rate is for frat rats
or for students who have full-time dead-end jobs, as the case may
be. It may seem odd to link these two kinds of students together,
but they share the common characteristic of being too busy to
study very much. Eighty percent of students stay in-state. Half of
those who go out-of-state go to private schools. That leaves only
ten percent going to public schools out-of-state, and many of
those are the students for whom colleges compete for with
scholarships. Out-of-state tuition waivers are granted more or
less at the drop of a hat. I find, interestingly, that the
Univeristy of Connecticut uses such waivers as a tool
to recruit international students.
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http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2006-08-30-state-universities-cover_x.htm
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http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba482/
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http://www.dantes.doded.mil/dantes_web/library/docs/distribution/2418.pdf
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http://www.provost.uconn.edu/textfiles/dgctf_05_2006.doc
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:QSeoByKgn_UJ:www.provost.uconn.edu/textfiles/dgctf_05_2006.doc+%2B%22public+universities%22+%2B%22out-of-state+tuition+waivers%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=13&gl=us
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For Connecticut to attempt to collect out-of-state tuition from
illegal immigrants would amount in practice to refusal to
accept them, based on their status, at the same time that it
is actively recruiting foreigners in foreign countries on more
favorable terms. They would be saying in effect that an
illegal immigrant's money is not worth as much as a
foreigners's money.
State and local tax revenue comes sales and real estate
taxes from things like sales and real estate taxes. Large portions
of real-estate taxes are assessed on things like
business premises and rental property, so they become
equivalent to sales taxes in their operation. These taxes tend to
be fairly regressive. For example, if you are living in a
ratty old apartment building whose owner hopes eventually to
become rich by selling the land for a building site, and who
doesn't believe in doing repairs in the meantime, the property tax
assessment will depend on the sale price of similar buildings,
which is to say, on the probability of an office tower being
built. The rent will have to cover the property tax.
Practically anyone who physically resides in the state pays
these taxes, directly or indirectly. It's not as if
illegal aliens were exempted from taxation.
Here's an interesting case from Arizona. In this instance,
the difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition for
four young men was raised by public subscription after they won a
prestigious competition. These kids from a high school on the
wrong side of the tracks in Tucson beat MIT. You get that?
They beat MIT.
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0423robotics23.html
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/robot.html
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/hourlyupdate/163038