Kansas is one of them. In the fall, state Senate President Stephen Morris said some sacred cows of the past might have to be slaughtered to plug a $492 million hole in the budget for the 2012 fiscal year. But, as Sherrer noted, higher-education spending in Kansas today is roughly where it was five years ago, and even a hold-the-line approach on its $755 million budget is a losing proposition for Regents schools because of increases in operating costs.
If one of today’s second-graders is to pick up that college diploma in 2025, something will have to change with school finance, says Sen. Jean Schodorf. She’s seen school funding from a rare perspective in Kansas—K-12 statewide, in her current Senate role, and before that, as a member of the school board in Wichita, the state’s largest district.
“We’re going the opposite direction,” she said of Obama’s goal. “When I came to Topeka 10 years ago, the goal was to get to 75 percent state funding of Regents institutions, and have tuition and other fees cover 25 percent. If that were the case, it would help toward the goal. But now, tuition is funding a bigger percentage than the state covers.”
Gov. Sam Brownback’s proposed budget, which only partially offset the loss of federal stimulus money used this year, represents a net per-pupil reduction in state aid, Schodorf said, and school district reserves won’t be able to make up the difference.
Missouri lawmakers face equally unsavory choices, said Sen. David Pearce, chairman of that chamber’s education committee. “There is tremendous pressure on the state budget,” he said. “In Missouri, we cannot deficit spend, and we’re looking at some tough decisions.”
But he does consider higher education funding a priority for the state as a whole, not just for the health of the universities involved. “We’ve got to determine how we can live within our means, how we create jobs and retain jobs, but I’m hopeful we’ll be able to get as much as we can for higher education. It’s very important; it creates jobs and it keeps jobs in our state.”
In the previous two years, Gov. Jay Nixon had struck a deal with state universities, limiting cuts in higher-education spending to 5 percent if the institutions would hold the line on tuition. They did. But even a cost-cutter like Nixon, a Democrat who has hacked $2 billion out of state spending since taking office, is facing the need for more of the same.
Missouri’s budget woes have been estimated as high as $900 million for the coming year, a figure so massive that reductions in higher-education funding appear unavoidable.
Michael Droge, president of Park University, noted that private schools like his would have to be a part of the 60 percent solution because they serve a student base that differs in many ways from the traditional students who attend public universities.
“The lion’s share of what public universities do is with traditional populations; private institutions do quite a bit for working adults,” Droge said. “Public universities certainly couldn’t get to 60 percent without the privates, but if you look at it from the other side, you could say the same thing.”
The bottom line, Droge said: “Private universities, public universities, community college—they all need to be working together or won’t get to that 60 percent. And we need to be helping K-12 as well.”
Real-World Impact
Questions about adequate higher-education funding and degree-attainment rates are not merely academic exercises. Even without a college degree, someone with an associate’s degree or other certification and training can realize benefits that strengthen the state’s economic fabric, educators say.
That means community college administrators could find themselves working overtime. As Tom Vansaghi, associate chancellor at Metropolitan Community College points out, MCC and its peers are experiencing heavy demand for their work-force training services. They are moving quickly to add programs that help train workers who can meet demands for job skills that employers need now, not four years from now.
Because of their lower cost structures and accessibility, community colleges will play a vital role if the country is to reach Obama’s 60 percent target. In the two-state area alone, three of the top five institutions of higher learning, measured by enrollment, are two-year schools—St. Louis, Metropolitan and Johnson County community colleges. JCCC, in fact, overtook the University of Kansas last fall as the largest college in the state in terms of undergraduate enrollment.
Sherrer says the contributions of those institutions can’t be overlooked. “Tech education is very critical,” he said. The state is pushing hard on two fronts in the life sciences sector, one to win federal cancer center designation for the University of Kansas Cancer Center, the other for the National Bio-Agro Defense Facility at K-State, and “somebody has to work in those labs,” said Sherrer. “They’re not always four-year-degree people.”
The economy, he said, is multifaceted. Certified nurses aides working at nursing homes in rural Kansas can increase their earning power by stepping up to two-year nursing certification. “That’s economic development,” he said. “You start changing the wage levels and benefits of the lowest-earning group and you have a significant impact on the overall state economy, particularly if you can focus it in the less-populated areas.”
That won’t absolve degree-granting institutions of the need to churn out more college-educated engineers, he said, citing Kansas City’s wealth of world-class firms that are already demanding more workers. And not to quarrel with the $1.3 billion annual impact that cancer-center designation would have on the state, Sherrer said, “we shouldn’t forget there are people out there who can raise their standard of living with a good certification in a field that pays well.”
“Not everyone needs a four-year degree,” he said, “but I’ll tell everyone this: The more education you have, the more likely you’re going to increase the potential you’ll have for earning enough to take care of yourself. And that’s a good thing.”
Yet even in that area, Missouri is making only incremental progress toward a goal of having at least an associate’s degree in the hands of residents 25-34 years old by 2025. In 2009, the IPEDS figure was 39 percent, the highest it had been over a five-year period, but the growth arc is well short of what what’s needed to hit the state’s own goal of 50 percent. The Kansas figure was even lower, at 30 percent completion within three years.
Tom Burke, president of Kansas City Kansas Community College, said a focus on the 60 percent figure might be taking the nation’s eyes off of a more relevant goal.
“There was a time, if you look at our history as a nation, where we didn’t have 60 percent attainment rates for high school graduation,” he noted. “So yes, it’s a reasonable goal, but I don’t think it’s an imperative.”
The most important thing, he said, was assessing the needs of students, rather than national or institutional needs as determined from a campus corner office.
“What are the requirements for the careers that students are pursuing?” he asked. “Answering that will determine whether we reach the 60 percent goal—or whatever goal we set to reach.”