Education Quote by Jodi Rell

Rell’s line is a politician’s kind of math: not proof, but persuasion. By turning a budget fight into a classroom metaphor, she tries to make tuition restraint feel like a teachable moment rather than a compromise with fiscal limits. “The best math lesson” flatters students as rational actors, then quietly reframes them as consumers who should applaud a price adjustment. Subtract the increase, she implies, and you’ll “benefit from the dividends” later. The vocabulary is pure investment-speak, nudging higher education away from a public good and toward a financial product with an expected return.

The intent is tactical: justify holding the line on tuition (or reducing a planned hike) as not merely political prudence but moral clarity. The subtext is more complicated. Calling future gains “dividends” assumes the labor market will reliably reward degrees, and that the institution’s value can be captured in earnings. It’s a soothing narrative for an anxious era: families watching costs surge, states squeezing budgets, universities leaning harder on tuition revenue. If students can be convinced that today’s sacrifice (or “discipline”) leads to tomorrow’s payoff, the immediate question of who should fund public colleges gets blurred.

It also hands responsibility back to students. The state’s role becomes a one-time subtraction; the student’s role is to endure and then cash out. That’s the quiet ideological move: depoliticize affordability by translating it into personal finance, where optimism substitutes for structural accountability.