One of the drivers of spending growth at the state level, we are told, is the need to keep up with enrollment growth within the UNC system. One might question whether taxpayers ought to so heavily subsidize every student, particularly the addition of marginally qualified students into the system who will not exit with a degree.

There?s also the confused nature of the sales job in 2000 for $3.1 billion in higher education bonds, most of which were designed to build new structures on UNC campuses to accommodate more enrollment. You mean, without spending hundreds of millions of dollars on debt payments for these buildings, UNC wouldn?t be able to take all those new students? That would have been a good deal ? forgoing the chance to hit up the taxpayers for capital costs, so that we could forgo hitting them up again later for operating costs.

Now, it seems, the confusion continues. At the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, it is reported that enrollment is actually going down a bit. The problem? We aren?t spending enough tax dollars on marketing and scholarship assistance, administrators say.

Lots of students, need more money. Not enough students, need more money. As I told The Charlotte Observer in a different but parallel context, no matter what the question is, government officials think the answer is to get more money from taxpayers.