Roy letter: Education, taxes
In the spring of 1968 I enrolled at Boise College. Tuition was around $145 per semester. I was working for minimum wage, $1.65 per hour. In those days a kid could earn enough in a little over a month to pay for a year’s tuition, at minimum wage.
Adjusting for inflation that tuition would be about $1,050 today and minimum wage would be $11.92 per hour.
Today tuition at BSU is $3,663 per semester, 350 percent of the inflation-adjusted 1968 cost. Minimum wage is $7.25, 60 percent of the inflation-adjusted 1968 wage. A kid would have to work six months to pay for a year’s tuition. Half of their income.
In 1980 the state funded 93 percent of the cost of Idaho’s public universities and colleges and student tuition funded 7 percent. Today the state funds 54 percent and students pay 46 percent.
Idaho has set a goal of 60 percent of high school graduates achieving a postsecondary degree by 2020. Currently only 40 percent reach that goal.
I know budgets are tight. That’s because the Idaho Legislature keeps cutting taxes. Middle-class kids can’t work their way through school anymore. Please value education like past legislatures have.
Please, no more tax cuts.
Darwin Roy, Mayfield
This story was originally published February 3, 2018 at 7:01 PM with the headline "Roy letter: Education, taxes."