UT and the private option
In Wednesday’s “UT and the public option,” Joshua Avelar incorrectly asserts that by “not attending a public university … [you] would have kept your hard-earned money … in the free, private market away from those troublesome government bureaucrats.”
This could not be further from the truth. After all, we are required by the state and federal governments to subsidize public education through taxes (e.g., state sales and property tax, federal income tax). If I choose to attend a private university, my tax dollars are not returned.
Avelar comments that competition does work. However, establishing public institutions does not increase competition. Government institutions are inherently inefficient.
Therefore, by diverting scarce resources in education away from the private sector and into the public sector, the government reduces the overall quality of education.
As a practical example, let us consider UT and Rice University, which have student populations of 50,000 and 6,600 and faculty populations of 2,500 and 1,007 whose average salaries are $110,800 and $129,100 per year, respectively.
Although UT spends twice as much as Rice on faculty, the student-to-faculty ratio at Rice is one-third that of UT’s. If Rice were to triple its student-to-faculty ratio by reducing the number of faculty, it would spend less than one-sixth of what UT spends on faculty.
Although forcing taxpayers in Texas and across the nation to subsidize our education is beneficial to us, it is hardly fair. Too often, the true costs associated with government programs are obscured by the nature in which they are paid for.
According to Avelar, “students here at UT can thank the state government for erecting an establishment that made it possible for them to go to college.” Rather, students should thank the state and federal governments for making it financially unfeasible to attend a private college.
After all, if we are already forced to pay for our own education through taxes, who in their right mind would opt into paying for another at a private institution?
— Joseph Gauthier, Aerospace engineering junior
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