Monday, January 05, 2009

Price fixing? Now there's an idea!

Monday night on KET, Senate President David Williams suggested that the desire to make college more affordable might necessitate fixing tuition rates at state schools.

At a time in which we really need long-term solutions, this isn't one.

Instead, we should move away from need-based aid and toward merit-based aid.

This is a discussion that Kentucky has to have, so I'm glad President Williams brought it up. But tuition freezes barely make a good band-aid. Getting the perverse impact of artificially inflated demand for a college education out of the equation is the only way to really lower education costs.