Can the problem of rising post-secondary tuition be fixed?

I'm one of those lucky fools who have parents affluent enough to put him through the years of college that led him to a comfortable life and career. I'm not going to pretend that I know exactly what my friend is going through. She's got loans, see: lots of them. She has loans for her undergraduate education. She has loans for her graduate degree. Hell, she has loans for costs related to getting her professional certification. Loans, loans, loans.

So, that got me thinking: how much has tuition gone up in the past few years? According to whatever media source you decide to read, the number can range from 30% over three years to 4.3% annually, for private colleges. Apparently, there's some disparity between public and private colleges, and their tuition increases. One news article from the U.S. News and World Report suggests that decreasing public subsidies have resulted in increases in tuition, despite budgets being flat or decreased. Meanwhile, private schools, apparently, have spent more money from endowment funds and other private sources, but have managed to keep tuitions from going through the roof; in fact, some have even lowered their tuition costs.

There are many other reasons, of course. Statistical analysis tends to hide the fact that private schools can hire the best and brightest because they can demand higher tuition from incoming students. Public schools, meanwhile, have a duty to the public as a whole, meaning that they have to cater to a wider range of students, with varying needs, and must also spend funds to support students with special or exceptional needs. The bottom line is that the cost of education is slowly slipping away from more and more students. If per-student subsidies are decreasing -- which makes sense in our economy -- then what the public is beginning to see is the true cost of public post-secondary education.

It's expensive.

Consider the following. Suppose a private university charges $35,000 per student per academic year, and a public university $10,000 per year. Also suppose that the profit per student per year for a private university is $10,000, but the public university enjoys a $10,ooo stipend from the State every year per student. In an economy where subsidies decline, and budgets tighten, a public university is going to struggle to keep tuition low. This is because public universities, by their nature, must already keep a tight budget in order to follow their mission of providing affordable post-secondary education opportunities to the public. Meanwhile, the private university -- who has enjoyed years of profits reinvested into itself -- may decide to willingly take in less profit in the face of rising costs. What's really happening, though, is not a rise in the cost of education for the universities (that is not uniform for all schools providing the same services), but an end of public subsidies that have artificially lowered the cost to the student (and his or her family).

As a result, there's no quick fix to the problem of rising tuition. Public universities are already running on shoe-string budgets, with professors that could easily jump into the private sector and make double their money. Neither downsizing nor decreasing subsidies is a solution to the problem, though those paths are tempting. Perhaps the problem cannot be fixed at all; perhaps the subsidies have all made us accustommed to the thought of being entitled to a good education. The reality is that we are now paying for the expansive opulence of public post-secondary education facilities.

And new stadiums for our beloved Buckeyes.