NOBODY PAYS LIST PRICE. The bursar at Wisconsin - La Crosse is simply being a bit more explicit about it.

The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse would charge students $1,320 over three years on top of annual tuition increases to expand and diversify its student body under a pilot program approved Thursday by the UW System Board of Regents.

Such things have been going on for a long time, policy statements notwithstanding.

Until now, all of the state's public universities - with the exception of UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee - have charged the same level of tuition. The money has gone toward instructional costs only.

Under UW-La Crosse's program, which must be approved by the governor and Legislature, a quarter of the $15 million generated would go toward financial aid. Half of 1,000 new students admitted would be minority or low-income.

Note the conjuring trick from the first paragraph to the second. Everybody might see the same tuition, but not everybody sees the same scholarship or grant or work-study opportunity or loan, and some of those scholarships and grants have "financial need" or "historically underserved" earmarks. That more of the money might have come from legislative appropriations I do not dispute, but not all matriculants at La Crosse or Platteville or Oshkosh paid list price. In that respect nothing has changed.

The proposal, however, is properly stimulating a debate over the public and private benefits of higher education.

While the regents rallied around the pilot program, a leader of the United Council of UW Students said implementing it across the system would be a mistake. He said it would saddle students with too much financial burden.

"I think it would be a disaster," said David Glisch-Sanchez, the organization's director of academic affairs. "It would send the message that the entire university should be funded by students and their families."

Break that last claim down: to the extent that the university is funded out of general revenues, people who do not qualify for admission are paying to support it, including the climbing walls and Oktoberfest and the summer ritual of throwing stuff away. It's certainly in the students' interest to have their higher education take less out of their pockets, but let's evaluate the public and private benefits and the possible regressive transfers first.

There's also the Parkinson's Law phenomenon at work.

The additional money would go toward the UW System's "growth agenda" - roughly $50 million in new initiatives that include $10 million for research at UW-Milwaukee and 2,000 new full-time students, most of them in the UW Colleges and statewide extension.

Under the UW-La Crosse pilot program, tuition would increase $220 each year for three years starting in 2008. That would be on top of the annual tuition increases approved by the regents for all of the schools in the UW System.

The university, which saw its state support cut by $6.3 million over the last six years, plans to use the money to add 1,000 students and 100 faculty members over six to seven years.

Ronald Lostetter, UW-La Crosse's vice chancellor for administration and finance, said such an expansion is needed to address the growing demand for the university and to improve the quality of education. Nearly 6,400 applicants vied for 1,750 spaces in the freshman class this fall, he said. The student to faculty ratio is 23:1.

"We want to increase quality for all students," Lostetter said.

But the expansion goes beyond class sizes. A major focus of the program is bringing in more low-income and minority students, of which UW-La Crosse has few. The university would hire new staff to help recruit and retain 500 such students. It would use $3.8 million to fund scholarships and other forms of financial aid.

"We are targeting two particular groups," Lostetter said. "Students from the bottom two income quintiles and students of color."

He said UW-La Crosse needs more diversity to prepare its students for a multicultural work force.
Ryan VanLoo, president of UW-La Crosse's student association, said he supports the pilot program even though it would mean higher tuition bills.

"This will move us forward in the right direction by bringing in full-time faculty and staff and diversifying our student body," he said.

So even if the expected minority enrollments don't show up, because Madison and Milwaukee and Platteville and Oshkosh and St. Cloud (reciprocity) and Northern Illinois (we have some Cheesehead Specials) are also pursuing those more diverse student bodies, there will still be things to spend the money on. And notice the other goodies in the list. If population pressures are causing Madison to tighten their standards, LaCrosse and Milwaukee (and, per corollary any other Wisconsin public college) will argue that their programs ought to be worthy of students good enough to get into Madison, and their faculty ought to get research support more like Madison's, and for all I know more technology corridors and football teams. And thus the dilemma of public higher education: more emulation of the flagship universities leading to more proliferation of doctoral programs turning out more future baristas?