COLLEGE APPETITES

Gov. Mel Carnahan's $310 million tax increase in 1993 -- the one to pay for the Outstanding Schools Act that Missourians didn't get to vote on as promised -- has pumped millions into secondary and elementary education in the state. Now the governor will be going to bat for higher education in the state.

Missouri's Coordinating Board for Higher Education wants the state to spend $642 million for general operations at Missouri's 13 publicly funded four-year colleges and universities in fiscal 1997. That is a hefty $71.7 million more than will be spent in the current budget. It is also an overall increase of 12.5 percent. That increase doesn't include an additional $44.5 million recommended for capital improvements at the state's universities and colleges.

Corporate tax payments to the state are rising at record rates, thanks to Carnahan's 1993 tax increase. And higher education officials can thank Missouri business for the funding windfall that allows them to even think about seeking a 12.5 percent budget increase.

But it's difficult to imagine those same businesses, burdened with extra taxes, being able to increase their own spending plans even by half of what Missouri higher education is asking for. It also is difficult to imagine local governments, or any large private or public entity, being so well off this year that they could increase their revenue or their spending 12.5 percent.

What makes the higher-education request particularly hard to justify is that, while the coordinating board is seeking a double-digit budget increase for higher education, their benefactors -- Missouri colleges and universities -- continue to saddle students and their parents with higher tuition costs.

With a 12.5 percent increase in state funding, would we see a corresponding decrease in tuition and fees? Hardly. And yet the tax increase that would pay for the education budget increase is forcing many of the parents of students enrolled at Missouri colleges to fork over more of their income in state taxes.

Missouri's colleges and universities are doing a good job. A decade or so ago they also did a good job when they enjoyed a reputation as being among the Midwest's best education bargains. The bargain prices are gone, and we would like to presume the quality of the product has improved proportionately.

If such things were measured only by how money is being sent, higher education would be doing a bang-up job. Unfortunately, there are trade-offs. The money earmarked for higher education doesn't produce itself. It first must be taken from individual and corporate taxpayers. While the economy seems now to be humming right along, it is naive to think money pulled out of the private sector and dumped into education will magically reproduce itself in the economy.

But if it doesn't, public education in Missouri will only be taking a bigger slice of a shrinking pie.