Tuition deregulation is failing Texas students

The pursuit of a higher education in Texas has never been more daunting, and as tuition and fees at our public universities continue to climb, the dream of attaining a college degree is becoming a nightmare for more Texas students.

In 2003, the Texas Legislature voted to deregulate tuition and allow universities to set their own tuition rates free from legislative oversight.

Supporters argued that deregulation would drive students to consider which university offered the best educational value for their dollar and force schools to compete on the basis of quality and affordability.

They failed to take a key factor into account: the explosion of readily accessible student loan debt.

Student loans now represent the nation’s second-largest source of debt, surpassing credit card debt and second only to mortgages.

Federal student loan disbursements in Texas have nearly doubled over the past decade, and the average student borrower in Texas now graduates with more than $24,000 of student loan debt.

Student loan companies are well aware of the insatiable demand for their product and are motivated to issue as much debt as a student is capable of assuming.

These easily accessible loans can disassociate students from the true cost of their education and prevent them from appropriately scrutinizing its value.

To be clear, there’s nothing inherently wrong with taking on some amount of student debt to help pay for education.

Student loans serve a valuable purpose in higher education and, when used responsibly, can help provide greater access to educational and career opportunities that might otherwise be out of reach.

The problem comes when the cost of higher education balloons to the point where student loans represent the only realistic option to pay for college and pursue a better life. Unfortunately, a growing number of Texas students today find themselves in that situation.

By providing public universities the flexibility to set their own rates, the Legislature has essentially given them a perverse incentive to increase tuition and fees as the simplest means of expanding their own operating budgets.

In the fall of 2003, a resident undergraduate attending class full time paid $1,934 per semester in tuition and fees. A decade later, the same student owed an average of $3,951 per semester.

Designated tuition (the portion of tuition set directly by the universities) has increased an astounding 222 percent.

Do we believe that the value of an undergraduate degree is twice what it was only a decade ago?

A survey conducted earlier this year by the consulting firm Accenture found that 46 percent of recent U.S. college graduates consider themselves underemployed, working jobs that do not require a college education.

This broken system is leaving an entire generation of students mired in debt and frustrated by a lack of opportunity while supplying universities with extravagant budgets to fund special projects and ever-expanding administrations.

The Legislature must reassess how we manage our public universities and consider whether the deregulation policies enacted over a decade ago still make sense.

Attending one of our world-class public universities shouldn’t be a luxury afforded only to the wealthy or those willing to mortgage their futures by assuming massive student loan debt.

It’s time to demand that our public universities live within their considerable means and work to provide affordable and attainable higher education for Texas students.

State Sen. Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown, represents Senate District 5, a 10-county region of central and east Texas.

This story was originally published December 11, 2014 at 5:49 PM with the headline "Tuition deregulation is failing Texas students."