Del. Clay Athey (R-Front Royal) says he’s going to do something about the percentage of in-state students at public universities in Virginia. He says that universities should have to maintain a 70% rate to continue to receive state funding, lamenting that less than half of UVa students are from Virginia. So Athey is going to introduce a couple of bills into this year’s General Assembly session to fix the problem. That makes sense, right?
Well, no. Garren Shipley writes that UVa doesn’t want the bill because a) 69% of their students are from Virginia, not Athey’s mysterious “less than 50 percent” number and b) out-of-state students subsidize the cost of an in-state education for the rest of us, since the state hardly funds public universities anymore. The Roanoke Times’ editorial board calls out Athey on this, pointing out that not only are his facts wrong, but his underlying assumption that out of state students are undesirable also isn’t borne out by the facts.
Some folks think that the bills introduced into the legislature each year are the result of careful analysis and studies, each crafted to address a specific need. Hell no. Some legislator just has to get a wrong idea in his head, the legal wizards at Legislative Services turn it into a bill, and, poof, you’ve got yourself a legal proposal to do something stupid. This here is Exhibit A.
So where is his plan to subsidize the money that will be lost by evicting or not enrolling out of state students? There isn’t one? Color me shocked!
One other point that doesn’t often get made in this argument: the talented out-of-state students the the state’s universities bring in often stay after graduation, adding to Virginia’s collective brainpower.
More Saudis. More Chicoms.
Well done, Will. Because the most important lesson we could impart at Mr. Jefferson’s University is xenophobia.
Xenophobia? You guys have a clinical name for every policy difference?
No Will, just a nice way of saying belligerent hillybilly**. Nothing clinical about it.
Funny how you frame a policy difference with a reference to Saudis (some of your presidents best friends) and a slur on the Chinese. What is your party scared of? Seems like anything not White or “Made in America”…
I know, I know…. you cant make a comment without some one picking on you.
** props to Bubby for the term
Why even bother to respond to the flame-bait from “will”? His comments here seem to be nothing more than a regurgitation of chum first thrown by Malkin, Coulter, Goldberg, FreeRepublic, et al. And when backed into a dead end of that borrowed thinking, he (or she) might just lash out and call you names — like gay, as if it were a slander (Dec. 2 thread).
Thanks, U-Hoo, for the compliment!
Whoa Tim, is this the pointy-headed neo-con wannabee Will Vehrs? He is no Hillbilly. A hillbilly judges a person by their character, not the woodpile they come from. Diversity is our strength, our heritage.
Diversity is our strength. Keep repeating that that warmed-over cant. It’s working out great in the Balkans.
How’s that insistence on a pure Jewish state working out for the Tribe there Willy.
Arab citizens comprise almost 20% of the population of Israel and enjoy a panoply of civil rights unheard of anywhere else in the Arab world. How many Jews live in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, etc?