Texas Governor Rick Perry is calling for all public universities in Texas to guarantee that the tuition students pay for their first semester of college will be exactly what they pay for their last, and every semester in between. Perry’s proposition seeks to limit the debt students accumulate over four years in college by eliminating surprise charges each semester.

In Texas right now, the average price for a semester is $7,166, while the average debt of a Texas college graduate is just under $21,000, according to The Texas Tribune.

Perry’s proposition seeks to limit the debt students accumulate over four years in college by eliminating surprise tuition increases each semester.

While this is a noble goal on Perry’s part, and seems at first to have no negative strings attached, this may actually have adverse ramifications.

The tuition freeze is meant to be an incentive for students to graduate in four years, and Perry is threatening to cut funding to colleges that do not graduate their students on time.

Currently funding is based mainly on the number of students enrolled at a university, not the number coming out of it.

Perry’s graduation rate-based budget would force the universities to be accountable for how quickly their students graduate, the same way public elementary and secondary schools have been held accountable for standardized test scores.

Anyone who has been to college knows that it can be excruciatingly difficult for some college students to get their priorities straight and become accountable for themselves. In a perfect world, a four year tuition freeze would be a fantastic motivation to do well; unfortunately, we do not live in a perfect world.

Students will always have a tough time getting through college in four years, whether the cause is too much fun or too much work. Therefore, it would be unfair for a university to be penalized for the actions of its students.

However, this is not to say that a tuition freeze is a bad idea. In fact, a tuition freeze would allow more students to attend college, and perhaps alleviate a lot of financial worries.

If a student does not have to work while going to school, it is plausible that he or she would make better grades and perhaps even graduate earlier. But this is only a likely case for some students, and not a viable basis for taking away a university’s federal funding.

And what about schools that do not receive state funding? St. Edward’s University is a private school, and already comes with a bigger price tag than most schools. Would this tuition freeze affect private schools like St. Edward’s at all?

Perry makes absolutely no mention of private colleges and universities in his program pitch, so it is safe to assume that he intends to leave them alone. Yet, in the long run, it is likely that private schools will either have to implement similar policies in order to compete, or let themselves become facilities for the elite, virtually wiping out economic diversity among future students attending private institutions.

The bottom line is this: a tuition freeze as an incentive to graduate in four years is not a bad idea, but punishing universities if students do not graduate on time is.