Chaucer just got more expensive. The 14-university State System of Higher Education is raising tuition by 9 percent, the biggest increase in 11 years. At California University of Pennsylvania, for example, resident tuition rises by $362 to $4,378 annually. Resident tuition at Penn State goes up 13.5 percent and at Pitt, 14 percent. Why• The crunch is on. Pennsylvania closed a $1.3 billion gap with higher taxes, the rainy day fund, capital borrowing, and a piddling 0.3 percent cut in spending overall. Allocations to the state system dropped by 3 percent; state-related schools lost 3.6 percent. Thus the taxpayer subsidy is reined in. State revenues are dropping across the country. The faux “Clinton” stock market boom of the 1990s (a bubble upon which state budgets were predicated, and overspent) went fizzle, and state-school students across the country are hit with higher tuition bills. But, folks, what resident state system undergrads pay is chump change. Tuition for a year at Carnegie Mellon University, private and nearly seven times pricer, will top out at $26,910 for students who entered after fall 2000. Notably, 50 percent of its students receive some form of financial aid. Sorry that life is tough and things cost money. But we’re even less happy with the state system students and their parents who believe the taxpayers owe them tuition assistance. Is the old but oftentimes forgotten principle called self-reliance to be dismissed• The pride of families working together, utilizing their own resources and financial aid if necessary also is worth its weight in gold.

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