College tuition a bargain?

University of Washington president Mark Emmert’s guest commentary in the Oct. 24 Seattle Times completely misses the point [“College tuition remains a bargain,” Opinion].

Defining a bargain as a tuition cost that is less than the real cost of instruction is self-serving in that it fully disregards the fact that tuition fees are increasing precipitously.

High-school graduates are deferring college entrance, and college graduates have loan balances that are not only penurious in today’s economy, but actually drive students to jobs that enhance their ability to repay rather than conform to their real career interests.

Higher education is a public good that needs to be adequately funded from the public purse. In the past, some public universities in California and New York have provided free college education at the taxpayers’ expense. This trend toward free public higher education was unfortunately reversed during former President Ronald Reagan’s years, and the conservative political aftermath.

President Emmert should be talking about our state shouldering increased financial responsibility for higher education, not offering gratuitous defenses of tuition increases.

How can a tuition increase of 15 percent be a bargain when inflation is at zero? Perhaps UW education is a bargain in the mind of the university’s financial office.

It is certainly no bargain to students and their families who are finding it increasingly hard to make ends meet in an era when our country should be striving to make a college education more universally available.

— James Maynard, Sammamish