Chris Christie, the Republican governor-elect of New Jersey, who campaigned promising to increase state support for education and called the New Jersey funding for higher education “deplorable,” said he may cut state aid to public colleges in his first budget.
A hilarious piece by Joey Novak at PolitickerNJ.com ridicules Christie’s plan as a value add to higher education. Since the cuts will render state universities more expensive, why not therefore conclude that they’re more exclusive? From the piece:
On the Douglass College campus at Rutgers in New Brunswick, a student, a Sarcasm major, who wished to remain anonymous said, “In this economy, I think it’s great that Christie’s cuts to Rutgers will increase tuition—making my education worth that much more. Just imagine what that will mean in the job market.”
Currently in-state students pay much less to attend New Jersey public colleges than students from other states. By the logic of more-expensive-equals-better, education at school like Rutgers is more valuable to a student from Ohio than a kid from Tenafly. Or, as Novak says: “Jersey Joe and Jersey Jane deserve the highest value education possible. And if that means cuts which raise tuition, so be it.”
