The impossible has happened. Last year, tuition stayed flat at the University of Oklahoma. And now, faculty are receiving raises.

Oklahomans have been lectured for years, by former OU President David Boren and others, that this was impossible. The University, and all of state higher education, was cut to the bone. Tradeoffs were not possible. Tuition went up every year along with demands for more state subsidies.

“We’ve employed every creative cost-cutting method we can think of,” Boren claimed in 2012, “and we’re now cutting into the flesh and bone of the university’s mission of academic excellence.”

OCPA has questioned and skewered these claims for years. It is exciting to see OU’s new president, Jim Gallogly, doing what is best for both students and faculty. And, of course, helping out taxpayers, too.

According to the OU Daily, faculty will receive “a market-based salary increase between 1.5 and 6 percent, with a minimum of a $1,000 raise, for full-time instructional faculty on the Norman campus and … at OU Law and OU-Tulsa.”

Imagine what could happen in the rest of education with this kind of leadership? What if teachers were prioritized over superintendents or sports equipment? What if we looked for more efficient ways to educate, and were willing to make tradeoffs, rather than just doing what we’ve always done before?