On our best days, we Americans believe in earning our way, rising to the challenge and unifying around common goals. But on our worst days, we speak of entitlements, shrink from competition and bicker over meaningless distinctions.
Here’s the latest meaningless distinction over which some people are bickering: in-state versus out-of-state.
According to an article in USA Today, there is apparently quite a bit of strife in some states. At issue is who should be admitted to public colleges and universities, and specifically how many seats should be reserved for in-state residents and how many can be tossed open to applicants from out of state.
Americans now demand of institutions of higher learning the kind of service they’ve come to expect from the corner bistro if they call ahead for a reservation. On the wane is the charming notion that if you want something, you earn it, that no one is entitled to anything no matter where they live, and that public universities exist to serve the public at large, not just those students from the state where the school is located.
These days, what you’re more likely to hear is that this college or that university “belongs” to the taxpayers of Vermont, or Arizona, or Idaho, and that those blasted interlopers from places like – gasp – California should stay home and attend their own colleges and universities.
A lot of students do stay home. According to the article, about 80 percent of college-bound students attend school in their home states and more than half of those who do cross state lines don’t factor into this debate because they attend private universities. But, among those who do leave, the percentage who attend a public four-year university is on the rise – from 31.8 percent in 1996 to 38.5 percent in 2004.
And from 1994 to 2002, 36 states saw an increase in the percentage of non-residents who enrolled in their public colleges or universities.
That’s good news for the universities, which charge out-of-state students significantly more than in-state residents. It’s also good for the student body, and for the educational process, that students are exposed to people from different parts of the country. That’s a kind of diversity we should all support.
Yet for some, the growing popularity of crossing state boundaries to attend college is a scary trend. Some folks – including parents who would, no doubt, like for their children to attend college close to home but who worry about them having the goods to be admitted to Our State U – are even trying to guarantee that locals have enough slots by advocating a kind of quota system for in-staters. Talk about affirmative action run amok.
The idea is just goofy enough to enjoy the enthusiastic support of lawmakers in several states around the country, from Wisconsin to Florida to Hawaii.
In some states, legislative efforts to keep tuition for residents at reasonable levels have forced universities to really raise the rates for out-of-state students. And why not? If you’re in a state legislature, you probably don’t care what people think in the other 49 states. [In Colorado, state law caps non-residents at 40 percent of enrollment at most state colleges.]
I mean, why should these poor kids today have to get into state college and universities the way the rest of us did, by studying hard and earning it? Besides, the old system is so unpredictable. For instance, in Vermont, where this became a hot issue after the University of Vermont began to put in-state students on a waiting list while admitting students from out-of-state, you could have a third-generation Vermonter not get accepted while someone from Massachusetts or Mississippi or Maine got in. Vermont is trying to adjust the scale in favor of the home team by giving scholarships to those who graduate in the top 10 percent of their high schools, and full rides to valedictorians. States such as Georgia and South Carolina are doing something similar.
Everywhere you look, states are trying to take care of their own and make sure that state residents don’t get lost in the mix.
That’s understandable. But there is something unfair – and self-defeating – about set-asides. They teach our children precisely the wrong lesson: that merit and hard work don’t matter as long as colleges and universities are willing to hold a place for them close to home.
