College Tuition

The cost of signing up for a Maryland prepaid college tuition contract this year will go up about 10 percent, far less than in the past two years, a sign that tuition inflation may be ebbing. The board of the College Savings Plans of Maryland approved new contract prices yesterday for the prepaid plan that begins enrollment Nov. 15. Depending on a child's age and other factors, the price increases range from 10.1 percent to 10.8 percent, said Joan Marshall, executive director of the program.

It is something of a truism that whenever the federal government steps in, costs usually rise and efficiency declines. That is especially true when it comes to a college education, which President Barack Obama promised during the 2008 campaign to make more affordable. "We've got to make sure every young person can afford to go to college," he said then. Instead, tuition costs keep rising, along with the debt owed by increasing numbers of graduates, who are now campaigning -- with bipartisan approval in an election year -- for Congress to stop interest rates on their subsidized Stafford loans from doubling in July.

Gov. Martin O'Malley called for a "moderate" increase in public university tuition on Wednesday as state lawmakers gathered in Annapolis for the opening of a 90-day legislative session sure to be dominated by bleak financial choices. The top task for lawmakers will be plugging a $2 billion hole in the state's roughly $13 billion operating budget, meaning they'll make the latest round of steep cuts in an election year. The Democratic governor, who has prided himself on fulfilling his campaign promise to hold the line on college tuition increases, said the "brutal economy" and pressure by the university system and other state officials led him to believe the freeze should end. Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, a Democrat, called it a "major concession" from O'Malley, who like all 188 state delegates and senators, is up for re-election this fall.

The state's top court has agreed to decide if Maryland's Dream Act will be on the ballot this fall. The Court of Appeals said this week it will hear CASA de Maryland's appeal of a judge's decision to allow the referendum on the 2010 law. The court scheduled arguments for June 12. The controversial measure was designed to provide college tuition discounts to certain illegal immigrants. Opponents blocked the law from taking effect last year by obtaining enough signatures to bring it to a referendum.

In the photograph accompanying the article "History, drama at the close; College tuition breaks extended to illegals" (April 12), you show members of Casa de Maryland celebrating the passage of a bill allowing in-state college tuition fees for the children of illegal immigrants. Why, I wondered, isn't Casa de Maryland encouraging these young people to become citizens? Why aren't the people we elected interested in having them become citizens? Surely if any such interest existed, some stipulation could have been included in this bill requiring undocumented students to study for and become citizens as a condition of getting a tuition break.

Edwin Downs is a hard-working college freshman. He's also a convicted murderer serving a sentence of life plus 20 years in a maximum-security Jessup prison.It's a combination that doesn't sit well with Congress, which appears poised to stop paying for college tuition for Downs and other inmates.One provision of the anti-crime bill under final consideration in Washington would prohibit inmates from receiving federally funded scholarships known as Pell grants.Prisoners should not be getting college scholarships when many middle-class taxpayers can't afford tuition, proponents of the ban say.Others say a ban would be a short-sighted abandonment of the concept of rehabilitation.

MUCH has been said and written recently about unnecessary and outrageous college tuition increases, about the greed of professors and about waste and inefficiency in higher education.Some are calling for the privatization of campuses, for the tight-fisted control of dispassionate business people, for wresting control from bungling academics and placing it with those who know better how to run cost-efficient operations.It might be appropriate to examine those charges within the context of that bellwether of American pride and production, the automobile industry.

An article Sunday about tuition breaks given to university researchers understated the value of the benefit at the Johns Hopkins University. Hopkins annually offers the equivalent of half its tuition -- or $9,400 -- for all employees and their spouses and dependents to attend college. Last year, 627 employees took part in the program.Also, the last name of Jean and David Sack was spelled incorrectly.The Sun regrets the error.For people like Jean Sacks, a research librarian at the Johns Hopkins University, a campus policy that helps to pay for her two children's college education has saved her about $36,000 -- nearly a year's salary.

When Missael, a young man from Hidalgo, Mexico, first set eyes on a college campus, he could barely contain himself. "There was so much excitement," he said Wednesday, recalling the moment two years ago when he took a tour of the Johns Hopkins University's Homewood campus and sat in on a couple of classes in large, imposing lecture halls. "I said to myself, 'I want to be a part of this one day. I want to go through this experience.'" Missael, who lives in East Baltimore, is one of thousands of students set to benefit from a bill approved this week by the Maryland General Assembly that extends them discounted rates at the state's colleges.

The state's top court has agreed to decide if Maryland's Dream Act will be on the ballot this fall. The Court of Appeals said this week it will hear CASA de Maryland's appeal of a judge's decision to allow the referendum on the 2010 law. The court scheduled arguments for June 12. The controversial measure was designed to provide college tuition discounts to certain illegal immigrants. Opponents blocked the law from taking effect last year by obtaining enough signatures to bring it to a referendum.

The House of Delegates' vote Friday night in favor of the Civil Marriage Protection Act was a tremendous step forward for equality and justice and for the rights of Maryland families. For many of the 72 delegates who supported same-sex marriage, the vote was a courageous one, coming in the face of promised retribution at the ballot box and, in at least one case, threats of physical violence. It followed two hours of passionate but civil debate and was the culmination of months of preparation by advocates on both sides of the issue.

The debate over a state law that would provide college tuition discounts to some illegal immigrants shifted to an Annapolis courtroom Friday. Attorneys for the law's supporters told an Anne Arundel County Circuit Court judge that the Maryland Constitution bars a November referendum challenge. The law is about funding state government programs, and appropriations measures are not subject to referendum, they said. But those backing a petition drive calling for a referendum said the measure does not deal with funding.

Governor Martin O'Malley's announcement that he intends to lead efforts to pass a same-sex marriage bill is about the worst decision this liberal Democrat has made yet to pull Maryland into the gutter ("O'Malley to back same-sex marriage," July 23). Same-sex marriage has no business in the Free State or anywhere else in the country. A marriage is between a man and a woman - period. This is all about the votes that the Democrats hope to win in the next election. If Governor O'Malley goes through with this foolishness, let the citizens of Maryland force it to another referendum like the one on the Dream Act's granting of college tuition breaks for illegal immigrants.

Today in Boca Raton, a South Florida woman named Ann Van Wagner pays a debt to an illegal immigrant who saved her life. Ms. Van Wagner has organized a fundraiser at a Boca bowling alley — "Bowling For Brains" — to support the Johns Hopkins Brain Tumor Stem Cell Laboratory headed by Dr. Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa. "Dr. Q" removed a tumor from Ms. Van Wagner's brain at Hopkins in January 2010. She's made a full recovery and has been supporting his research ever since. Ms. Van Wagner's hero is perhaps the nation's leading illegal-turned-incredible citizen, a native Mexican who hopped a border fence in 1987, worked in the vegetable fields of the San Joaquin Valley and eventually ended up at Harvard Medical School, where he graduated cum laude.

In the photograph accompanying the article "History, drama at the close; College tuition breaks extended to illegals" (April 12), you show members of Casa de Maryland celebrating the passage of a bill allowing in-state college tuition fees for the children of illegal immigrants. Why, I wondered, isn't Casa de Maryland encouraging these young people to become citizens? Why aren't the people we elected interested in having them become citizens? Surely if any such interest existed, some stipulation could have been included in this bill requiring undocumented students to study for and become citizens as a condition of getting a tuition break.

When Missael, a young man from Hidalgo, Mexico, first set eyes on a college campus, he could barely contain himself. "There was so much excitement," he said Wednesday, recalling the moment two years ago when he took a tour of the Johns Hopkins University's Homewood campus and sat in on a couple of classes in large, imposing lecture halls. "I said to myself, 'I want to be a part of this one day. I want to go through this experience.'" Missael, who lives in East Baltimore, is one of thousands of students set to benefit from a bill approved this week by the Maryland General Assembly that extends them discounted rates at the state's colleges.

It is something of a truism that whenever the federal government steps in, costs usually rise and efficiency declines. That is especially true when it comes to a college education, which President Barack Obama promised during the 2008 campaign to make more affordable. "We've got to make sure every young person can afford to go to college," he said then. Instead, tuition costs keep rising, along with the debt owed by increasing numbers of graduates, who are now campaigning -- with bipartisan approval in an election year -- for Congress to stop interest rates on their subsidized Stafford loans from doubling in July.

The House of Delegates voted Friday to extend in-state college tuition to illegal immigrants — the highest hurdle so far for a plan that already has passed the Senate and has the backing of Gov. Martin O'Malley. Undocumented students cheered the 74-66 vote, and embraced supportive lawmakers as they streamed out of the House chamber after hours of spirited debate. Opponents said the tuition benefit could further stretch the state's diminished financial resources, and sends a message that it is OK to break the law. Maryland would become the 11th state to enable qualifying immigrants to enroll in public colleges and universities at discounted rates.

Maryland's Democratic General Assembly passed a pair of historic — and divisive — measures in the final hours of the 2011 legislative session Monday night, increasing the tax on alcohol for the first time in more than a generation and making Maryland the 11th state to extend in-state college tuition breaks to illegal immigrants. Gov. Martin O'Malley, a Democrat, has said he approves of both plans; his first round of bill signings is set for Tuesday. Beginning July 1, the sales tax for beer, wine and spirits would jump from 6 percent to 9 percent, raising an estimated $85 million per year.

The passage Friday of a bill in the Maryland House of Delegates extending in-state college tuition rates to children of undocumented immigrants who graduate from Maryland high schools opens the way for these young people to have a real shot at the American dream by going on to college. Though the debate over the issue has been spirited and at times contentious, in the end lawmakers did the right thing by recognizing how much the state's future depends on a highly educated workforce, and how badly it will need all the bright young minds it can get in order to grow and prosper.