Who should control what students pay for college?
In this state, the governor prepares a tuition proposal that is typically approved by the University System of Maryland’s Board of Regents — a group of 17 gubernatorial appointees.
In Florida, the Associated Press reports, the state legislature is vying for control of the state’s college tuition rates against a citizens group that wants the authority to be solely in the hands of universities.
The citizens group has expressed concern that the legislature is too willing to keep tuition low for political reasons, starving the state’s 11-university system of necessary funding.
Legislators have been fighting for the better part of this decade against what the consider to be reckless overspending by the university system.
Although the university system’s Board of Governors has recently reached a compromise with the Florida legislature — granting university leaders the right to raise tuition by as much as 15 percent in a year without seeking legislative approval, until Florida’s inexpensive schools reach the national tuition average — the citizens group remains opposed to any political influence in determining tuition.
Florida lawmakers have already approved an 8 percent increase in the state’s universities this year. In Maryland, meanwhile, the Board of Regents just approved a 3 percent increase — the first time tuition has changed since Gov. Martin O’Malley took office in 2007.
Florida may have the palm trees. But Maryland has the tuition stability.