You are incapable of doing math, so let me do it for you. Per capita government spending (state + local, excl. federal) for a resident of Montgomery County = $17,500 Per capita government spending for a resident of DC = $30,000 Tell me more about these “state functions” when DC doesn’t even pay for its own criminal justice system. Corits, prosecutors, supervision, prisons all paid by the Feds. Absolute joke. |
D.C. pays for Medicaid, unemployment, "state" transportation shares, etc. More than 25 percent of the revenue the District takes in is from federal transfers. I'm not sure where your per capita government spending figures come from, though, so I don't have any idea how they relate to that. You're right that the feds pay for the criminal justice system, but I believe that money still gets captured in the D.C. budget figures; the D.C. Department of Corrections budget, for instance, seems to think virtually the entire agency's budget comes from "local funds," even if those funds originated as a grant from the feds: https://cfo.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/ocfo/publication/attachments/fl_doc_chapter_2023j.pdf You probably don't disagree with me, anyway: D.C. could afford to run a non-elite public university, especially if the funds DCTAG uses got redirected there by Congress. You apparently were too busy trying to demonstrate how smart you are to realize that, though? |
The state of Maryland pays for all of these things too. DC is not special in any way except for being especially entitled in its belief that it should have federal handouts despite being so wasteful. Here’s the math laid bare for you to understand. MD state per capita spending is the state budget ($63 billion) divided by state population (6 million) = $10,500. MC per capita spending is the county budget ($7 billion) divided by county population (1 million) = $7,000. $10,500 + $7,000 = $17,500. DC per capita spending is the city budget ($21 billion) divided by the city population (700,000) = $30,000. Tell me what special expenses that DC pays again. The idea that you think DC is owed federal TAG funds is a joke. Ultimate welfare mentality. |
Apart from funding a substantial part of the Department of Corrections (and incarcerating DC prisoners), the Feds provide and fund most of the local prosecutor through the US Attorney's office. (The DC Attorney General has a role on under-age criminals.). While there is room to criticize the US Attorney's record in the past several years, the present structure saves the DC taxpayers a boatload of money and provides, on average, higher calibre prosecutors who are attracted to work as AUSAs rather than for the DC government. |
The out-of-state tuition number is completely made up by public university systems. It's basically the Suckers Rate and they are happy to have some wealthy OOS parent pay it in order for forgo raising tuition and/or taxes on local residents. The gap between in-state and OOS tuition grows wider every year and that's not because OOS kids simply "cost more" to the system. It's subsidy. |
The problem isn’t the funding. The kids drawn to UDC are typically kids who barely got through high school. My coworker went there and her work is in a 5th grade level at best. Zero expectations from professors. |
My point on the math is that it's totally meaningless to compare D.C.'s per-person spending to Montgomery County's just by dividing by population, because D.C. pays for stuff that Maryland pays for (in both cases, largely covered by federal money) that Montgomery County's budget doesn't include, but the D.C. budget does. I don't see why you wouldn't give the D.C. TAG funding to the D.C. government if the D.C. government was funding a public university, since the entire point of the program is to somehow offset the fact that D.C. doesn't have a public university. But it costs a total of like $30 million a year, so fine, don't bother. If they had a real public university here, it would wind up getting more than that in federal support anyway. Again, though, you're too busy being snotty to realize I am saying that yes, D.C. could choose to spend more on higher education and fund a public university system, which you also seem to be saying. If you'd rather call me names, that's great, but insulting someone who's agreeing with you is a stupid way to try to win an argument. |
Sure, but still, the states don't have any incentive to expand the number of students who are eligible to NOT pay the suckers rate. |
Did you not see that the PP provided a total for MC residents that included state per capita spending ($10,500) and county per capita spending ($7,000) to arrive at a total ($17,500) and compared it to DC ($30,000)? It’s flabbergasting to see you respond that these are not apples to apples comparisons when as another PP notes, the Federal government pays for basically all of DC’s criminal justice system. I have a lot of sympathy that UDC is dysfunctional and terrible. However that’s also not a great excuse for Federal taxpayers to pay for a benefit only for DC residents. |
It depends on the state. In many states OOS tuition is the difference in per student cost minus state subsidies. So if the state budgets $1.5 billion for higher education to serve 50,000 students then the OOS tuition is set at 30,000 higher per student to offset. In practice however, state universities love OOS students and take as many as they can without upsetting the legislature in order to maximize revenue. |
There's no state where the residents of the state would be better off if D.C. residents also got in-state tuition to their state universities. |
That's may be the theory. In reality, they charge as much as they can while maintaining the applicant pool that they want. For some schools like Alabama or Arizona, it means free. For others like Berkley it means they will bleed out of state students dry |
Exactly. The best option for everyone is for the DC government to fund and support UDC at an adequate level so that it can be a real option for DC residents. |
DCTAG creates an adverse selection problem for UDC because it financially incentivizes highly qualified students looking to attend a state university to do so outside of DC. |
DCTAG isn't creating this problem, it was responding to the problem of UDC's perceived quality (or lack thereof). If D.C. funded an actually good UDC, the $10,000 a year from DCTAG wouldn't be enough to offset the significantly lower tuition for in-District residents; DCTAG would be useful if you had your heart set on going to Michigan or Berkeley or something and just wanted a discount, but if you were deciding between UDC and, say, a non-flagship state school elsewhere, UDC would be a better bet. But only if it were a better school than it is now. |