Almost a year after the open secret of tuition set-asides became common knowledge, the practice is still wrong.

For newcomers to Iowa State, this is the substance of tuition set-asides, in brief: As we explained in an editorial last April, the Iowa Board of Regents requires Iowa’s public universities (Iowa State, Iowa and Northern Iowa) to allocate 15 percent “of gross tuition proceeds … for student financial aid.” Last year, Iowa State allocated 22.5 percent of tuition for that purpose. Essentially, the practice of tuition set-asides means that, per Regents policy, Iowa State takes some of your tuition in order to give it to other students.

In practice, such money is given for both need- and merit-based aid. After the exposure of the practice, however, the Regents moved to petition the state legislature for additional funding for a grant program so they could phase out tuition set-asides. 

In September, the Regents recommended that the program be drawn to a close over five years, contingent upon additional state funding. At their November meeting, the Regents proposed that the state fund need-based scholarships to the tune of $39.5 million in order to help phase out tuition set-asides. Tuition would then be reduced by an amount equal to that received.

Now that the legislature is in session, however, the prospects of eliminating tuition set-aside look dim. State Rep. Cecil Dolecheck, chairman of the Education Appropriations Subcommittee, according to the Des Moines Register, stated that the problem was more that Iowans did not know the practice existed and that the amount may have been controversial, not the practice itself.

Using the tuition of some students to pay for the tuition of others, however, is not wrong as a matter of policy. It is wrong as a matter of principle.

Universities should be diverse places. They should exist as gathering spaces for students from all ethnic, economic, religious and other demographic backgrounds. Such pluralism is part of their mission, and is beneficial to students, in and out of the classroom. Encountering other, challenging perspectives is an essential part of growing up. The city, state or country that has a university within its borders also benefits from such pluralism.

Normally, consumers (students) are responsible for paying the costs (through tuition, in this case) a product (a degree). The costs associated with making a product must be passed along to the consumer for the producer to make a profit. As Adam Smith wrote in “The Wealth of Nations,” a producer “could have no interest to employ [workers] unless he expected from the sale of their work something more than what was sufficient to replace his stock to him” and earn a profit.

But, being institutions of learning, universities should not seek profit; and since the Iowa public has assumed responsibility for establishing and maintaining Iowa State as a public university, it is they — not students — who should bear the cost of creating the environment of learning necessary. Forcing students at a public university to pay more than their cost of instruction (aside from other things they buy, such as a dorm room and meal plan) is wrong.