New Jersey College Costs
Enlighten-NewJersey has a post up about one of Jon Corzine’s affordability plans, the plan to make college more affordable through grants, tax credits and loans that you don’t have to pay back. I think Corzine will give you a better deal if you attend a New Jersey college.
As is well known, New Jersey may have the biggest college student “deficit” of any state in the country, meaning more Jersey high schoolers go to out of state colleges than students from out of state coming here. Back when I was applying to colleges, Rutgers was the place you attended when you couldn’t get into your first choice. Rutgers is a bit weird in that Rutgers reputation increases the further away from New Jersey you get. I lived in California for two and a half years, and people out there think Rutgers is an Ivy League school.
The reasons NJ students go out of state are varied, but I doubt cost or affordability is a major reason.
The college cost issue is complicated. The annual cost of tuition at a private college is often compared to the MSRP of a new car. Nobody pays the sticker price. And tuition cost is directly related to the availability of grants. If you gave every college student in the country a $2000 grant towards college tuition, college would not all of a sudden become more affordable. Colleges would just raise their tuition by $2000 or reduce other financial aid to eat up the extra money.
If Jon Corzine really wanted to help me pay for my children’s college costs, he should cut my property and income taxes so that I could save more money. And maybe eliminate or reduce the capital gains tax so that I could keep more of my stock earnings.
And as far as the cost of New Jersey colleges, has Mr. Corzine been paying attention to the mess at the University of Medicine and Dentistry, New Jersey?? UMDNJ has turned into a patronage mill, a source of easy jobs and no bid contracts for politically connected consultants. If they get rid of a few of those multi-million dollar constulting fees and perhaps fire some of the dead weight on the payroll the cost of college tuition at New Jersey colleges and universities would drop immediately.