It really sucks how much college costs these days. Even if you get a work study job, that puts a smallest of dents in tuition. I mean really, like a job in which you make all of eight dollars per hour and has an earning cap on it is going to help all that much. Oh wow, you’ve got  a cushy work study job? What does that mean? Nine dollars per hour? And to make matters worse, tuitions just seem to keep on getting bigger. They’re like the baby in Honey, I Shrunk the Kid.

Now, Missouri governor Jay Nixon is putting his foot down on runaway tuitions, proposing a tuition freeze for Missouri public universities. There’s some skepticism on the part of republicans (where was the skepticism when assertions of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq emerged?) as to how realistic it is to freeze tuition considering the state budget.

Biz Journals reports:

Missouri's public universities would get the same amount of state money in fiscal 2010 as they did in fiscal 2009 in return for the schools’ pledges not to raise tuition next school year, under an agreement Gov. Jay Nixon and school leaders announced Wednesday.

Nixon announced the proposal during visits to Harris-Stowe State University in St. Louis, the University of Missouri at Columbia and the University of Missouri in Kansas City.

The plan still requires the backing of the state legislature, which is looking for ways to cut spending as it grapples with a projected $342 million budget shortfall. Nixon didn’t specify what other budget cuts would have to be made for the proposal to work but he is expected to release his proposed state budget Tuesday.

Some Republican lawmakers have raised questions about whether a tuition freeze is possible, given the budget shortfall. “I believe it is premature,” said Senate President Pro Tem Charlie Shields, R-St. Joseph. “I support higher education, but without knowing the ... amount of money we project to have in the state’s bank account for the coming fiscal year, I do not believe it is responsible to promise any sector of state government that they will be immune from budget cuts.”

The state’s higher-education appropriation for fiscal 2009, which ends June 30, is nearly $1.03 billion.

To be fair, the republicans do indeed have a point. We are in a recession and we are going to need to limit spending if we’re ever going to get American debt under control. But making sure that the state doesn’t jack up tuitions isn’t really spending, so much as keeping tuition manageable for all the sorry suckers trying to get a degree so they can get some of those quickly diminishing American jobs.