Not content with invoking socialized medicine as a means of bleeding students dry, the increasingly left-leaning University of South Carolina announced this week it would be raising tuition by 2.9 percent for the upcoming 2018-2019 school year. Additionally, food costs at the school will climb by 3.5 percent and housing costs are set to climb by four percent – adding another $800 (at least) to the already-exorbitant annual price tag of attending the school.
And again, these increases are in addition to the new “individual mandate” that will charge students without health insurance around $2,000 per year beginning this fall.
Last year, in-state students paid an average of $24,462 per year while out-of-state students were charged $44,562.
Unreal …
“We will continue fighting to ensure that this doesn’t create a financial burden to current and prospective students,” student body president Taylor Wright said in a statement endorsing the tuition hikes.
Really?
And how, exactly, does Wright propose to do that? With his words?
Somebody get this guy some snowflake therapy. Stat.
Higher education costs in the Palmetto State are out of control … and have been for years.
According to the S.C. Commission on Higher Education (SCCHE), from 1987 to 2015 costs skyrocketed by an astronomical 761 percent – compared to a 240 percent increase in health care costs, a 130 percent increase in housing costs and an 85 percent increase in income levels.
South Carolina’s higher education price increase over this time frame is much higher than the national increase of 549 percent. Meanwhile our state’s income growth lags behind the national increase of 115 percent.
Translation? It is virtually impossible for South Carolinians to afford college … at least not without assuming the sort of crippling debt that has the potential to unleash a second Great Recession.
As we have consistently stated, higher education isn’t – or at least shouldn’t be – something taxpayers are forced to subsidize.
“It is simply not a core function of government – whether via direct appropriations to institutions or taxpayer-guaranteed student loans,” we wrote in a post earlier this year.
This is why we have repeatedly called for the privatization of all institutions of “higher learning” within the Palmetto State, and an end to federal guarantees for student loans.
***
WANNA SOUND OFF?
Got something you’d like to say in response to one of our stories? Please feel free to submit your own guest column or letter to the editor via-email HERE. Got a tip for us? CLICK HERE. Got a technical question or a glitch to report? CLICK HERE. Want to support what we’re doing? SUBSCRIBE HERE.
Banner: Getty