EDITORIAL: The wrong way out
When Michigan Senate Democrats proposed a new grant to cover nearly the entire cost of college for all high school graduates who enroll at in-state schools, they were legislating for votes, not solutions.
Students certainly do need a relief from the extortionate current costs of higher education, but a plan that rewards institutions' bad behavior is not the answer.
Continuing to pour money into universities that raise tuition at a pace far outstripping funding cuts without first working on the issues of planning, transparency and oversight that have led us to the current crisis is a politically attractive way of kicking the can further down the road.
CMU, for example, now has more than 44 campuses in 13 states. How could legislators determine whether or not funding would remain at CMU's Michigan campuses instead of being funneled into online or out of state programs?
As several CMU administrators have repeatedly reminded us, the university does not tag its dollars. How are we expected to know where our money is going?
The Michigan Promise is a prime example of legislation designed to curry favor with parents and students, which ultimately fell far short of its premise.
The scholarship, which awarded up to $4,000 to students based on performance on a standardized test, was eliminated in 2009 after less than three years of existence, dropping future students as well as those partially through their benefits.
The new plan, which promises to pay thousands more than the broken Promise for every Michigan student enrolled, reeks of a similarly inevitable collapse — no matter how many strategic cuts legislators claim to have found to support it.
In this case, a failure of tuition coverage could leave tens of thousands of students cut off midway through their education, left with no financial recourse to remain enrolled in universities with tuition rates bloated from the very same legislation.
State Democrats are proposing what amounts to a shell game: shuffling state funds from public institutions to private citizens, then back again.
This bill may make more sense than other recent legislation, such as the ban on graduate assistant unionization that raced into law, but it is a poorly thought out solution to an extremely complex problem.
Legislators of all levels need to find a way to help students without perpetuating a system that has placed a greater emphasis on profit and expansion than serving students and communities.
