CSUN University News Clippings

Editorial: Wanted: Partners to save higher ed

(October 8, 2009)

Public colleges and universities educate 80 percent of students in the United States. They remain an engine of opportunity for students from all backgrounds.

But they are slipping.

In California, for example, per capita state funding for higher education in 1988-89 was $348; last year, it was $263. One big result of this dwindling investment: rising inequality in access to a higher education. Where California used to be a leader, today it ranks in the bottom 10 states in the share of students getting a four-year college degree.

California has long debated whether to move toward a model of higher fees and financial aid in a time of diminished public funding. This page has supported that idea, so long as the state provides financial aid for students who cannot afford higher fees.

Raising tuition while slashing aid for low- and moderate-income students, as the governor has proposed, would make access and affordability issues worse.

So what should public colleges and universities do in this era of declining state sup- port? University of California President Mark Yudof has produced a 10-page conversation starter that is worth pursuing.

In it, Yudof notes the national interest in producing engineers, doctors, teachers and ideas that become the new products of the future.

Then he points to historic federal support for higher education, beginning with the Morrill Act signed by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. Essentially, Yudof is calling for a Morrill Act for the 21st century – building on the century-and-a-half-old national system of state-run colleges and universities.

Yudof is pressing for an expanded federal role in higher education:

• Build on the existing Pell Grant approach. Give universities an incentive to enroll lower-income students with add-on funding based on the percentage of enrolled Pell-eligible students.

• Build on federal research awards. Give universities an incentive to train the researchers and teachers of the future with add-on funding for graduate programs.

• Create a competitive grant program for higher education centered on specific goals (like the K-12 Race to the Top grants), for example, to improve college completion rates for lower-income students.

These ideas are no federal blank check – and should launch a discussion of others.

Speaking at UC Berkeley in 1962, President John F. Kennedy called the Morrill Act “the most extraordinary piece of legislation this country has ever adopted.”

The Morrill Act, he said, created “through our national government, an entirely American kind of university” centered on the idea that “opportunity should be available to everyone and that education was the vehicle for that opportunity.”

The challenge, once again, is how to keep public colleges and universities excellent and accessible to all Americans. Yudof, as head of the largest public research university system, is well-placed to press both the state and federal government to rekindle their role in public higher education.

Public support isn’t just a job for the federal government. It is states that really have fallen off in funding higher education. But, as Yudof convincingly argues, higher education is not only a state responsibility. The nation has a stake in an educated citizenry, too.

Publication: Sacramento Bee