Hear the radio version of this story.
Tennessee lawmakers fired a broadside at the state's universities Wednesday.
Their complaint: skyrocketing tuition. But they say they can rein it in.
Their proposal is to freeze tuition when students enter a four-year state university. Whatever students are asked to pay as freshmen, that will be the price until graduation. All students have to do is stay enrolled and finish on time.
The idea, Senate Bill 2306, comes from state Sen. Dolores Gresham, the influential chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee. The Somerville Republican says that over the past two decades, tuition at the University of Tennessee has risen from $2,200 to more than $12,000. That's faster than inflation, wage growth, and even the stock market.
"This sure makes me wish that I had invested my retirement accounts in UT tuition," Gresham quips.
Universities respond that it's not really their fault.
At a hearing on the proposal Wednesday afternoon, representatives for the Tennessee Board of Regents and University of Tennessee systems said they're being forced to make more of an effort to retain students and keep them on track in four years.
But even taking that into account, Tennessee universities are spending just $1,000 more per student than in the mid-1980s, after adjusting for inflation, says Ginger Hausser, the Board of Regents' director of external affairs.
The bigger change has been in how education is funded, she says. Tennessee has cut public spending for universities, shifting the burden from taxpayers to students and their families.
Hausser recalls paying just a few hundred dollars a year to get her degree from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
"I wish we could go back to those days when it cost $750 to go get a bachelor's degree a year," she says. "It's not where we are today."
Those arguments didn't stop the measure. The Senate Education Committee approved the proposal unanimously.
It would cost universities about $30 million a year, and that means the idea is likely to get axed when the legislature's budget committees get a hold of it.
Still, even if the bill goes nowhere, it's sending a message to the universities to slow tuition increases dramatically.
Copyright 2016 WPLN News