Tuition Control

6th December 2023

My dear Senator Padilla,

In the modern American zeitgeist a college education has truly changed. It was once a four-year proposition that was a bridge to a better life. It made sense to borrow money to get there and it made sense to invest the time and energy.

Now the expense is dropping from the national focus with the degree having little value and taking far longer than it once did. There is no one solution to these problems, but if I may make a point, colleges charge more and more every year so the longer a student takes to get out of college the better for the college.

In the modern college system failure is an auger for profit, and success is not the goal of the institution. One way of changing this would be ‘tuition control’. You have no doubt heard of rent control, and this would be much the same thing. It would mean legislation that would prevent a college from razing the tuition of any existing student.

This would mean that the longer a student took to graduate the more space they would take for more profitable students. The college would be incentivized to get students out of college faster to make room for students they can charge more. It would give them a reason to want you to graduate and leave campus.

I can tell you, it took me far too long to get through school, and were as I had my reasons, good and bad, I would focus more on finishing and graduation were I to do it again. This will not resolve the problem but it will help.

Just a thought,


Richard Leland Neal