It's that time again. The hoopla on state funding for Penn State has arrived. Not being an expert in university funding, I do have a somewhat elementary solution: Tie the annual funding increase to an annually inflation-adjusted per-student amount. This baseline per-student funding would be adjusted each year based only on inflation.

If the university grows by increased enrollment, the total funding would increase as well. If inflation ran a bit high one year, the funding would follow. This would form the basis of an objective, predictable funding stream from the state that would not change on a politician's whim. If we wanted to get a little more creative (and greedy) we could suggest that this be the minimum funding increase. Setting the baseline per-student amount may be a bit more difficult and brings up two questions, unique to a publicly-funded university, that university and state officials should have addressed a long time ago: What is this "fair" baseline amount that the state should give to the university, and more importantly, what criteria do we use to justify this "fairness?" Answering these questions would likely go a long way in put to rest much of the squabbling that surrounds this issue.