After all, Khator and her leadership team demonstrated exemplary government service. Involving the entire college community, they researched best practices, looked in every nook and cranny and under all the seat cushions for extra dollars to balance the budget. The architecture students conducted a study of space management. Contracts were re-bid and frills were ruthlessly axed.

So, why in the face of such a “good” news story am I feeling grumpy on the subject of college tuition? Because less than 10 years ago, before the Texas Legislature and Gov. Rick Perry decided to deregulate college tuition, UH students were paying nearly half what they are now. In 2003, the cost of a semester ran about $2,077. Now it’s $3,855.

State leaders decided to give university regents the authority to raise tuition without permission from the Legislature in 2003 – while at the same time slashing state support to public universities.

Advocates of tuition deregulation promised that regents would be reasonable, but some lawmakers, like Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, were skeptical.

“I would caution that we not make tuition so high that we force people to finance their entire education,” Whitmire said during the 2003 debate.

Debt as big as a house

Last week, the Chronicle reported that outstanding U.S. student loan debt recently surged past $1 trillion – surpassing national credit card and auto loan debt. So Tuesday, I called Whitmire and offered the opportunity to say “I told you so.”

He obliged: Giving university regents the authority to set tuition “was a huge mistake. I’ve seen a lot of bad votes, but that was one of the worst I’ve seen in my career. We always took pride that Texas had very affordable higher education. Now, students have to take significant loans that truly look like a house note by the time they graduate.”

Of course, Whitmire noted, lawmakers gave up their power to set tuition to avoid a hard political vote on raising taxes. Most had signed anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist‘s pledge to never vote for a tax hike. But it was all a shell game: After the Legislature slashed higher education by over $300 million in 2003, Texas colleges and universities raised tuition revenues almost exactly the same amount.

“It was a tax increase” shouldered by college students and their families, Whitmire noted. “It was just called something else.”

Deregulation’s legacy

For young people, these financial games have real-life consequences: Starting a career weighed down with debt. By some national estimates, average student loans debts recently topped $25,000, up 25 percent from a decade ago.

Before tuition deregulation, Texas colleges and universities leaders every budget cycle looked for ways to scrimp. They knew, especially if they were going to get permission to hike tuition, that they’d have to justify their plans to a wary Legislature. After all, the state Capitol is a short walk for University of Texas students looking for a reason to protest on a nice spring day. Lawmakers were always reluctant to incite a march by permitting tuition hikes.

Now, non-elected regents do the dirty work for them. Why else would the Legislature voluntarily cede control of any issue? (As an aside, Whitmire believes the Legislature got hoodwinked in the bargain. Since they no longer set tuition, legislators have lost clout with university administrators on policy issues ranging from admissions to athletic conferences.)

Broke, dysfunctional

Perry last year began calling for Texas universities to create a $10,000 degree, counting on the public’s collective poor memory. That’s about what college cost in Texas when he took charge.

We can hope that Khator’s leadership at UH will serve as a peer pressure on other university presidents; students are unlikely to get help from the Legislature, according to Whitmire.

Efforts to rescind tuition de-regulation have failed. And in the current budget cycle, he notes, the Legislature cut higher education by $1 billion, while enrollment is expected to grow by 100,000 students in the same time period.

Meanwhile, lawmakers stick their fingers in their ears when anyone mentions the “structural deficit” created by the state’s 2006 margins tax.

“We have a broke and dysfunctional state financial picture,” Whitmire said.

So UH students, enjoy the reprieve. But expect the shell games to continue.

patti.hart@chron.com

read more: http://www.chron.com/news/kilday-hart/article/Years-of-tuition-shell-games-clobber-students-3457033.php