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<p>Yes, but not completely.</p>
<p>In my state, the gov’t pays only about 20% of the annual funding required to operate the flagship, maybe less, yet OOS tuition and fees is more than 2x the IS amount.</p>
<p>The flagship has a publicly stated goal of increasing OOS attendance from the current 20% into the 30+% range, purely because of the extra income they provide.</p>
<p>Maybe at one time the OOS premium could be justified as some sort of “compensation” for not paying taxes to the state, but these days it just seems like a money grab. </p>
<p>There is more to the subsidy than just the annual funding line. What about the past investments in the college? What about indirect funding such as land grants, land swaps, etc. You’d need to do quite a bit of research and be a good accountant to quantify the true subsidy OOS students are receiving.</p>
<p>Not to say that colleges aren’t trying to maximize revenue, just that the offset calculation is more complicated than your characterization.</p>
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<p>What’s the definition of “hardly?”</p>
<p>Again, 2 or 3 times gross ups of tuition for OOS vs. IS is just a gimmick. Local Polls distributing the burden of supporting their State U’s to OOS kids. The polish will come off that apple soon enough. It’s already being reported that an Undergrad degree from UMich gets you exactly zero more dollars 10 years down the road than a degree from “non-descript, directional University”</p>
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These are sunk costs and were often paid long before any current taxpayers started paying taxes. Current investments are usually bonded and paid off by the school year by year, which means OOS students are paying toward this as well.</p>
<p>A few state flagship universities can attract out of state students for the prestige of going there, even at a high price tag. But for other universities, its a local question. In Pennsylvania, with the highest tuitions in the country for in-state residents, Ohio State University is a cheaper alternative for students with decent board scores. I have no problem with states making money on out of state students, if they can attract them by whatever means. </p>
<p>To return to the topic of this discussion, I also have no problem with students following the rules to satisfy in-state criteria (isn’t that what our education system does so well, to teach kids how to follow the rules?) and to obtain professional help in doing so, if they need it. You can compare it to all of the board score prep courses our kids take: the system is in place, and the kids with our help are doing their best to work the system to their advantage. Isn’t that why the wealthy hire accountants and estate planners, and corporations hire lawyers? </p>
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<p>That’s not relevant - what’s important is that a university is an asset of the state, and belongs to the citizens of that state. You could, for example, wall off the state colleges and refuse to admit OOS students, in which case you would not need to operate as many universities and could sell or repurpose the land and assets.</p>
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<p>About a quarter of the annual funding for public colleges in Minnesota comes from taxes. Is a quarter of the funding “insignificant”? OOS fees make up for that subsidy. </p>
<p>Other states have higher public subsidies, and the annual public subsidy is only part of the public’s investment in state universities.</p>
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I think it is relevant when the argument is that taxpayers are subsidizing college costs. No one paying taxes right now paid anything for the first 100+ years of my state flagship’s life.</p>
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This doesn’t make sense. My state may no longer admit OOS students, but then all the students in my state who are going out of state now have nowhere to go, and will have to remain in-state.</p>
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<p>My hypothetical was for a single state unilaterally blocking OOS. Yours is for all states doing so simultaneously. In your scenario there would be winner and loser states depending on how popular they are with OOS students. A net winner in your scenario should rationally be charging higher OOS rates because it’s assets are valued by others.</p>
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<p>The discussion is about the difference between IS and OOS tuition, and is the OOS premium at some State schools warranted or opportunistic. NOT the percentage of total school funding that comes from taxpayers… :-/ The difference between UMN-TC IS and OOS tuition is what is insignificant. Especially when compared to most other State Flagships.</p>
<p>OOS fees don’t make up for anything. The Cost of education is the same whether you come from across town or across the country. And not many kids are subject to it. 30% of UMN-TC kids come from OOS. But if you factor those on scholarship (D1 athletics) and those receiving other kinds of grant/merit aid, I bet a very small percentage (i.e. “hardly any”) incur any additional cost due to residency.</p>
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<p>Yes, the cost is the same. I guess if you can’t understand that part of that cost is publicly funded, then I give up.</p>
<p>University funding in my state is less than 2% of the state budget. If I add up 2% of all the state taxes I’ve paid in the 30+ years I have lived in this state, it still doesn’t come close to the surcharge that an OOS pays <em>per year</em>.</p>
<p>The proposed state budget for next year allocates about $7200 per student in the university system. This is less than half of the surcharge that OOS students pay.</p>
<p>Charging OOS students more may have started as a way to keep from subsidizing these students with state tax dollars, but this certainly no longer seems to be the case.</p>
<p>Wow, in my state 10% of the state budget funds higher education. </p>
<p>Are you really counting all state taxes you pay? Income tax, sales tax, excise tax, property tax, etc?</p>
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<p>Granting lower tuition rates to residents has nothing to do w the residents contributing taxes to that state. I know plenty of people who sleep in one state, but have a business/property in a different state where they contribute significant tax revenue. There are also plenty of residents on welfare/public housing who contribute little in the way of taxes to the state.</p>
<p>The rationale for giving lower tuition rates to residents is because residents are VOTERS.</p>
<p>^ Tada! Well said.</p>
<p>Bob seems to thinks that being “publicly funded” is justification enough to gig OOS students. In his world? OOS drivers should pay 3 times as much as IS drivers on public toll roads.</p>
<p>@GMTplus7 is correct. My situation is exactly as he describes. We live in Delaware and my S is a student at the University of Delaware where we receive in-state tuition. My H works and owns a business in Maryland and we pay nearly all our income taxes to Maryland. In fact, because we have to file as non-residents, we pay an ADDITIONAL “non-resident surtax” so we actually pay more taxes to Maryland than if we lived there. Our income tax to Delaware, the years when we owe anything at all, is negligable. Delaware has no sales tax. If you’re going to argue that IS tuition should “follow the money” then we should be eligable for IS tuition at Maryland colleges and not in Delaware. But we don’t vote in Maryland. </p>
<p>Yes, there are outlier examples of those who pay more taxes in one state than the resident state. However, the vast, vast majority of those in state follow a certain pattern. IT’s not just the money in a state either, but the voting privileges. You pick those who make the laws and policies in your state, including those policies regarding school funding. So you get that in state privileges of those institutions for which you have allegedly had some say though votes as well as your money. </p>
<p>It’s the same thing with school districts. You send your kid to the district in which you live during K-12, and I daresay most people do not work in the their district, and in many districts, there are renters so property tax isn’t an issue. But in most cases, trying to send a child to another district can involve tuition payments, unless some release is attained.</p>
<p>MN has open enrollment for K-12. Can go anywhere there is room. And renters pay property tax. It’s built into the rent and paid by the building owner.</p>
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By this line of reasoning, almost no one pays taxes, because for most of us our money comes from an employer, who builds what we pay in taxes into our salaries.</p>
<p>This isn’t how it works in reality, though. A landlord doesn’t set the rent he charges by adding up all his expenses and adding some profit on the top. He charges whatever the market will bear, and the market rate is completely independent of his expense structure. If the building owner’s property tax goes up, he can’t just automatically shift that burden to the tenants; if he raises his rents above market level, he will lose tenants as they seek cheaper places to live. And if the building is empty, the owner still has to pay the taxes. </p>
<p>Same for your paycheck.</p>