Rachel Whitaker Source 1

A)Who is the "bad guy" in the war on finances in Higher Education?

B) Longanecker, David. "A Tale of Two Pities: The Story of Public Higher Education Finance in America." Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning 38.1 (2006): 14-25. ERIC. Web. 29 Feb. 2016.

In "A Tale of Two Pities" we see the different sides of the financial story of higher education. On one side, you have the administration of higher education blaming policymakers for budget cuts and other cuts to student aide. On the other side, you have policymakers defending their decisions saying that they have done the best they can but at some point the state has no money left to give. Not only that, but they find it hypocritical that they are being called out for not helping the lower class students, when it is the institution itself that keeps rising tuition costs even above inflation. They both have flaws, however if they worked together, everyone would win.

Hearing each side made it really easy to make the institution and the policymakers bad guys. In the end, I found however, that the policymakers are the lesser of the two because they do as much with what they have. Institutions on the other hand just raise tuition and use policymakers as a scapegoat. This has allowed me to sharpen my focus on the institution and their use of government funds and tuition rather than focus on the role policymakers play in finances. It is easy, especially with the help of the institution's guidance to blame policymakers and budget cuts for the need for higher tuition and other sources of funding, however, this article has made it clear that policymakers are not the ones to have the finger pointed at them. It is the institution that needs to be checked. I agree that both sides have work to do, but I believe that the institution itself has more to answer for than policymakers.

Some new questions I have would be: Why is tuition rising at a higher rate than inflation? Why is the institution using policymakers as a distraction from their true reasons of raising tuition? What exactly is tuition buying us? How are the little guys being helped if it's not coming from the Pell Grant? The point of this exploration is to find out why universities cost so much and where all of that money is going if tuition rates need to increase every year.