This Inside Higher Ed article from California State University at Long Beach president F. King Alexander is rather frustrating in several ways. It proposes that the federal government should “hold states accountable for maintaining certain levels of tax support for higher education.” Here’s an excerpt from an old version of the amendment Alexander supports (the new one is still under debate) — basically, if any state decides for any reason to cut higher-ed funding, the federal government withholds money:

A State shall provide– `(1) for public institutions of higher education in such State for any academic year beginning on or after July 1, 2008, an amount which is equal to or greater than the average amount provided for non-capital and non-direct research and development expenses or costs by such State to such institutions of higher education during the 5 most recent preceding academic years for which satisfactory data are available; and `(2) for private institutions of higher education in such State for any academic year beginning on or after July 1, 2008, an amount which is equal to or greater than the average amount provided for student finanacial aid for paying costs associated with postsecondary education by such Stateto such institutions during the 5 most recent preceding academic years for which satisfactory data are available. … `(c) Violation of Maintenance of Effort- Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary shall withhold from any State that violates subsection (a) and does not receive a waiver pursuant to subsection (b) any amount that would otherwise be available to the State under section 415E until such State has made significant efforts to correct such violation.

My most fundamental objection is that, constitutionally, the federal government has no right whatsoever to do this. Look at it like this: The federal government takes its citizens’ money, not because it needs to spend it on something it has the constitutional authority to, but so that it can redistribute it to the states for education. Then, it puts strings on that money dependent on state law. Basically, the government has stolen your money, and refused to give it back to you — not even to you, but to your state government — unless you pass the state-level laws it wants. No provision of the Constitution allows the federal government to use coercion to set state law. The author points out that the courts have tended to let it slide, but that’s really no excuse.

Objection number two is that it’s based on the idea that “the most significant factor impacting the rapidly rising cost of college education for nearly 80 percent of the higher education population has been the relentless decline in commitment on the part of most state governments to maintain requisite levels of public funding.” This is just hogwash. There’s speculation that such a decline might happen in the future, but over the last ten years, state spending on higher ed has risen far faster than inflation.

And three, economists dispute that government spending on higher ed even reduces tuition — it arguably does the exact opposite.

To be fair, one legitimate point the article makes is that federal money is currently based on tuition. Therefore, colleges can in theory cut aid and increase tuition, in effect supplanting their money with the federal government’s. The solution is to stop basing federal aid on tuition, though, not to set state policy at the federal level.