President Obama should put rising tuition blame on state legislatures

PRESIDENT Obama cast welcome prominence on the challenge of college affordability in his State of the Union speech, but the threat to withhold federal funding from institutions that don't rein in tuition is misdirected.

"Let me put colleges and universities on notice: If you can't stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down," Obama said Tuesday.

Unfortunately, his remarks incorrectly conflate rising tuition with higher education's overhead. Here are the facts: Universities' costs are not increasing. State support is declining, rapidly, and the funding is being replaced by tuition.