The latest college ratings from U.S. News and World report are out this week, prompting the usual press releases from schools that did well and grumbling from those that didn't, though there are enough categories in the rankings for most schools to find something to brag about.

Several UNC schools again ranked high on the "Best Buy" list thanks to a combination of good academic programs and low costs, driven by the state's historic commitment to keep a lid on in-state tuition to make higher education available to students regardless of their family income.

The constitution says that higher education shall be provided to all North Carolina residents "as free as practicable."  The debate over what's practicable comes up every time there's a budget crisis and middle class families keep losing.

Four years ago UNC President Erskine Bowles was praised for capping tuition increases at 6.5 percent per year, which meant that schools could raise tuition as much 26 percent in four years. The average annual increase was closer to four percent until the bottom fell out of the economy and state revenues suffered.

State lawmakers responded by giving individual UNC schools the ability to raise tuition on their own, on top of the cap, pushing costs up more than 20 percent at some campuses—which hardly seems practicable.

Supporters of the increase point to more funding for student aid programs for poor students and that's worth celebrating, but it doesn't do much for the middle class and lower middle class families who earn just enough not to qualify for scholarships but are barely making ends meet as parents worry about losing their jobs.

There are two reasons given by supporters of higher tuition, one practical, one ideological, and both misguided. Lawmakers say they have to turn to tuition hikes as part of a strategy to address the ongoing state budget problems, in effect helping balance the budget on the backs of students who want to continue their education at a UNC school.

It's especially troubling to raise tuition during a recession when families are facing all sorts of new financial burdens whether they qualify for scholarship help or not.

And it's not like tuition hasn't been increasing already. Ten states charged less tuition at their flagship campuses than North Carolina before this year's increase. The days of North Carolina having the lowest in-state tuition in the country are long gone.

The other and more troubling argument for higher tuition comes from the right-wing think tanks who want to charge North Carolina students what it costs the state to educate them, which would more than double tuition at most UNC campuses.  Anything lower, those on the Right argue, is a state subsidy of college that should be abolished.

Calling it a state subsidy is absurd. The university system is a state institution that provides an essential service to the citizens of the state. But even if you accept the Right's semantic misstatement, so what?  The state ought to be "subsidizing" college.

It's in all of our best interests to have a well-educated community, though the Right disputes that notion too, often complaining that too many people go to college.

And it's odd that folks who always point to the wisdom of the "founders" seem to have much trouble with the decision by North Carolina's founders to make college as free as possible.

Good for the North Carolina schools that did well in the recent U.S. News rankings, whatever you think of the criteria.

It would be cause for much greater celebration if the schools and state policymakers would try harder to live up to the constitutional requirement to keep college affordable for the state's families.