And Now, the Rest of the Story

Remember during the Income Tax War all the newspapers made much hay about the severe cuts that would come to higher education if the IT wasn't passed? How Tennessee would get a 15% tuition rise? But did you also notice that those same stories rarely, if ever, referenced other states? It was made to seem that this was a Tennessee problem, cause by our failure to adopt the IT.

Notice too that when the budget was passed that higher education only got a 7.5% rise, but that was still cause for beating of breasts at the papers?

Well, it turns out, according to this story in the USA Today that Tennessee was far from alone. Checking over this chart, one can see that the first tier of schools raised their tuitions around 12-17%, and the larger, second tier of schools raised their tuitions between 4 and 8%. Seems things aren't so bad as they were portrayed.

By no means are our colleges and universities in great shape. Salaries are still low and adequate class funding still lags. But it turns out that the papers tried to paint a more terrible picture than was the reality. Wonder why?

Until next time, that is all.
Your Working Boy