The Policy Farm Team

Nick Hillman
Indiana University

As Congress prepares to reauthorize the Higher Education Act, legislators are calling for colleges to get costs under control. One of the ways Congress is trying to tackle college costs is to create a “shame list” of colleges that increase tuition past a certain price threshold. At first blush, I almost like the idea of a “shame list,” but after looking into it, I realized that it’s actually a really bad policy option.

The shame list makes good political sense because legislators can say they’re keeping colleges honest, they’re looking out for the squeezed middle class, they’re responding to constituents’ demands, etc. However, a shame list doesn’t make for good policy because very few public universities are able to set their own tuition rates.

Only 14 states give public colleges the authority to set their own tuition rates. In the other 36 states, tuition is set by the state legislature, a governing board, or a coordinating body. So, when budgets in those 36 states start to tank (as I’ve written about in previous blogs), state legislators are likely to cut funds for higher education and pass the cost burden onto the colleges.

Public colleges are reliant on state funds, so when states come up short, colleges are forced to increase tuition. While it might be good politics to hold colleges accountable for the rising costs, it is not good policy to penalize colleges for something that they have little control over in the first place! This is not to say that public colleges should be off the hook. They absolutely need to get a better control over costs and strategies for making college more affordable, but a “shame list” isn’t a very progressive way to go about these changes.