In the fall of 1989, the tuition at Cleveland State University was approximately $2,100 a year. In 2026 dollars, that amounts to $5,457. At the same time, minimum wage in 1989 was $3.35 an hour or $8.70/hr. when adjusted for inflation. By the time I graduated, tuition had increased to about $2,500 a year ($5,433 in 2026 dollars), and the minimum wage was increased to $4.25/hr ($11/hr in 2026 dollars).

A college student in the early 1990s working a full-time minimum wage job in the summer could earn $1,700 towards their fall tuition. Although this would not cover a full year, they could continue to work part-time (20 hr/wk) and would have made up the $800 difference in a little over nine weeks. Maybe a full-time summer job wasn't available, or perhaps they decided to lighten their summer or fall work by taking out loans. In which case, a student that borrowed half the cost of tuition might leave school with loans totaling $5,000 (or $10,885 in 2026 dollars). All of this assumes that a student didn't receive any family support, scholarships, or grants.¹

If I were telling this story as a student today, the numbers would be radically different. At Youngstown State, tuition is $11,744 a year, and the minimum wage in Ohio is $11/hr. A student working full-time in the summer could earn $7,400. This would leave them with a deficit of $4,704. Unlike someone attending a state school in the early 1990s, this same student would have to work a part-time job for over 21 weeks to make up this difference.

Why the drastic difference in the cost of higher education? If you ask elected officials in Columbus, I suspect they would claim administrative bloat, run-away faculty salaries, health care costs, or DEI programs. But, as Policy Matters Ohio has noted:

In 1991, Ohio dedicated $7.03 of every $1,000 in state personal income to higher education. This plunged to $6.30 in 2000 and to $4.57 in 2011, a 35 percent decline over 20 years, which surpassed the 31 percent decline seen in the nation in the same period.²

While I could not find the most current number, higher education expenditures in Ohio are down 29% since 2001.³ It's no surprise that students today are facing higher tuition costs, and higher debt.

To be fair, there are other factors that have contributed to increased tuition costs, specifically, the "demographic cliff". The number of high school students has dropped off as a result of the lower birth rates attributed by many to the Great Recession of 2007-2008.⁴ As we know, less students translates into less revenue. But even with the demographic decline, there are still young people that could be attending college who aren't. In 2008, 62.7% of high school students went directly to college. In 2022 that number had dropped 10% to 52.7%.

Here again, there are any number of reasons for the 10% decline. I suspect the underfunding of public education by moving $2.5B in education dollars to private schools through vouchers⁵ might result in some students being less prepared for college-level work. Additionally, the constant disparagement of higher education by many on the right has not helped either. But it is also likely that the lack of affordability (read: state support) is a major part of this decline.⁶

Although many in Columbu would have you believe otherwise, it is not wokeness, indoctrination, unions, or faculty salaries that are the problem with higher education in Ohio. It is twenty plus years of state reductions in funding that are placing an unjust burden on today's students.

Many of you will be happy to know that diversity, equity, and inclusion training is alive and well at least one Ohio campus. I received an email back in September informing me that YSU would be offering training that is "designed to provide faculty, staff and select graduate students with a baseline knowledge about YSU's LGBTQ+ population, culture, barriers this population often faces, and resources available on and off campus."

Wait, sorry, my mistake. The actual training that was advertised was created to:

provide faculty, staff and select graduate students with a baseline knowledge about YSU's Student Veteran and Military population, military culture, barriers this population often faces, and resources available on and off campus.

It seems here at YSU we are fine with diversity, equity, and inclusion, so long as it includes the groups we like (or perhaps excludes those we dislike).

For the record, I am not against this type of training, but I am against arbitrarily choosing to care about one group and not others. If we are going to offer training to help faculty understand the needs of returning veterans, then we should also be able to offer training that helps faculty understand the challenges facing first generation college, minority, and LGBTQ+ students.

Needless to say, I was curious as to why this training did not violate SB1. When I emailed the administration with this question, I was told: "Dr. Vopat, our Warrior Awareness Training is in full compliance with the Ohio Revised Code (ORC). Thank you for your inquiry."

As a former professor of mine was fond of noting: "saying it don't make it so." Not satisfied with this response, I decided to move up the chain of authority.

I emailed the Ohio Department of Higher Education (ODHE) SB1 Team in Columbus to ask for clarification. They informed me that it was not their responsibility to determine what training programs were in line with SB1, and which were not:

Similarly, it turns out that the Attorney General's Office does not determine who is in violation of SB1 either. Furthermore, they do not respond to inquiries about possible violations of the law:

According to them, my only recourse would be to get a lawyer and sue the university.

So, to summarize. If you suspect there is a violation of SB1, you can ask the university whether it is violating the law. If they say they are not violating it—but you think they are—you can file a complaint with them. Since neither the ODHE SB1 Team, nor the Attorney General's Office seem to have a role), the university will then investigate itself and decided whether it is violating the law. Finally, you can demand compliance, but only if you get an attorney and sue the university. For what? Apparently, for violating a law no one is responsible for enforcing.

Watch here