Help students get out of tuition trap

When state budgets take a beating, college students and their families always seem to be first to feel the pain. The pattern is predictable —- budget cuts mean rising tuition and fees. At public four-year colleges, the share of educational costs covered by tuition has jumped from just over one-third to nearly one-half in just the last five years.

Though Georgia has made efforts to get out of the tuition trap and keep increases in check, college costs are taking a bigger bite out of family income, even after financial aid. The cost of attending one of Georgia’s public four-year institutions now exceeds 40 percent of an average working-class family’s yearly income.

Rather than raising tuition and fees for students —- as the University System of Georgia recently did —- it’s time to consider real policy change that will promote better productivity and results in higher education.

Georgia can begin by developing a system to reward colleges for graduating students, not just enrolling them. The current way states fund higher education is seriously flawed. Public money flows to institutions based solely on how many students attend and how much money was allocated the previous year rather than on how many students earn degrees and certificates, which will help the state build a competitive work force and create new jobs.

The current incentive structure that is used in Georgia and most states is the reason the United States leads the world in spending per college student but ranks last in graduating students. Being first in money and last in completion is not a recipe for success in the global economy.

In changing funding priorities, lawmakers must be careful to avoid the mistakes of the past in performance funding. New funding models must be simple, transparent and reward institutions for fulfilling their missions, rather than their aspirations.

Rather than building more facilities and expanding programs and courses, public institutions need to get more use out of the buildings they currently have and scale back courses and degree programs that cost a lot of money but produce few graduates. These courses and programs could be offered in partnership with another institution or eliminated altogether.

Lawmakers and higher education leaders also can create stronger incentives for cooperation in purchasing common goods and services and expanding enrollment at lower cost institutions. They need to develop policies that encourage students to accelerate the time it takes to obtain their degree, moving traditional college-age students from the six-year graduation plan to a three- or four-year plan. States that have accelerated learning time have freed up more resources to serve other students and move students into the work force more quickly.

Georgia’s colleges and universities also must provide opportunities rather than obstacles for working adults and students who transfer from community colleges to universities. Hollywood may continue to portray college campuses as leafy finishing schools for pampered teenagers, but the reality is that many undergraduates scrape by, taking classes part-time while living at home, holding down a job and struggling to pay the bills. In fact, over the last decade, college has only become less affordable, as family incomes and financial aid programs have failed to keep pace with tuition and other costs. And student loan borrowing has doubled in just 10 years.

Perhaps most importantly, we need to start talking about how we spend our higher education dollars, not just about how much we have or would like to have.

Even in hard times, Georgia can do much more to ensure that its colleges and universities meet the needs of students, communities and local industries. But it will require state leaders to choose the difficult path of real reform, rather than giving campuses tacit consent to take the easy road yet again.

> Patrick M. Callan is president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.