Public education in America has a been an integral part of advancing our local communities and nation. We found common ground in mandating affordable primary education so that our youth can grow up to know more than the generations before them. Early in our nation’s history, states invested in public universities knowing that an educated public would be more able to solve problems and advance the state socially and economically. With the G.I. Bill in 1944, a nation thanked its brave men and women for liberating a continent with the possibility of higher education and the tools needed to move our great nation forward.  

The value of an educated public is clear. Our local communities and nation do better when we invest in our people so that they may contribute to our society. However, lawmakers in the Republican controlled state legislature must have forgotten the various benefits of investing in our state universities as they have consistently failed to appropriate the adequate funds to keep tuition affordable for Iowa families.

Over the summer, a task force commissioned by the Board of Regents released a 5-year tuition plan that seeks to raise the cost of attendance at Iowa State by 7 percent annually until 2022. Resident students at ISU would, under the proposed plan, pay $10,537 in tuition by fall of 2022, up from $7,456 for this academic year. Governor Kim Reynolds even acknowledges that the steep increase is too much for Iowans saying that “there is no way that Iowa families could afford a 7 percent increase over five years.”

The Governor is correct in her assessment that it will be hard for many Iowa families to spend anywhere from $522 to $3,081 a year in order to attend a state university. What she fails to grasp is the fact that she, along with the state legislature, have the power to ensure that Iowans have access to affordable, high-quality secondary education. They can choose to support Iowa students by increasing state funding to our three public universities, or they can continue to offer major tax breaks to large corporations which led the state into its last fiscal dilemma.

The choice for Gov. Reynolds couldn’t be more clear. Either stand by your correct assessment that the tuition increase is too much and appropriate more funds for the universities, or explain to the state and young voters why corporations deserve tax breaks more than our youth deserve an affordable education.