New fun and games with public education in Lincolnland

The grain, er brain, trust that runs Lincolnland is looking into using some type of assessment metric to evaluate public institutions of higher learning and then use that ranking to determine state support. The code phrase is "out-comes based funding". This is such a terrible idea on so many levels you hardly know where to begin. OK, let's start with the un-obvious. What's the point? Is it to get better performance out of poor performing institutions by punishing them financially and removing resources? Yeah, that should work. Is it to put more resources into the best performing institutions to get the most bang for the buck? Increased resources? To education? In Lincolnland? Yeah, that was ridiculous. Is it to have some reason to further cut state support? Duh! It makes your head hurt every time someone wants a "metric" to evaluate higher education. Graduation rate, degrees per dollar, grants per faculty, wins per sports scholarship. Who knows. Oh, but won't that help improve the quality of higher education if degrees awarded or some similar metric is used. Can you say pandering? You can see the new slogan now: "Lower your standards and save your funding." And of course, we still have mopes out there, even in education itself, who bemoan the lack of assessment, the lack of a metric to use as a basis of comparison, which means the failure of faculty to know if anyone is learning anything. Has the Phactor calmly commented on this before? The more selective institutions will have it made so to speak, and woe be to institutions who mission requires them to admit riskier students. Nothing whatever good can come of this. Sorry, but the link to this news story was lost, but this is what it's based on. How can this not lead to gamesmanship being played and putting state insitutions into a competition for limited resources? Oh, maybe it'll be "Reality Higher Education". Today one of our state insitutions will be voted out of existence because of regular poor performance and failure to meet their outcomes. Next year another one will be at the bottom, and you see where this leads. Ah, yes, folks, Lincolnland where all our kids are out-of-state students.

Put back MAP grants cause students needs them

The budgetary crisis here in Lincolnland has led to many cuts in state programs including MAP grants for higher education. Now budgetary crisises are nothing new here in Lincolnland, one emerges annually, as our representative jocks play political football with money. And higher education certainly doesn't expect any favors, especially since out representatives figured out that they could gradually withdraw support from the state supported colleges and then dun them for letting tuition rise faster than costs. So naturally those colleges & universities must be wasting money on stuff like faculty salaries. During the Phactor's 30+ year career, state support has dropped from 66% to less than 25% of our budget. But this year the need-based MAP grants got cut, and as a result over 130,000 students wondered about how they were going to pay for the rising tuition brought about by diminished state support. And while our political jocks complain about job losses to China, China is putting more and more government support into higher education. They must know something our "leaders" don't. So while not worried about my own livelihood per se, the Phactor was pleased to see that MAP was restored, albeit in that great Lincolnland tradition without any funding, because as this student's sign demonstrates, they needs of their education.

A Very Clever Political Ploy

Having spent a 30+ year career at a great public institution of higher learning I have learned the good points and the bad points about public higher education. During good times, institutes of higher learning are one of the last to gain support, and during bad times they always face cuts.

But the clever ploy initiated here in Lincolnland is a marvel to behold. A couple of decades ago, revenues from the state provided nearly two-thirds of the cost of higher education. It was important to educate your citizens. But then the political leaders of our great state figured out that if you just withheld support, the institutes of higher learning would be forced to cover the difference by raising tuition.

Now of course the increase in tuition had to cover two things, real increases in the cost of education, including new unfunded mandates from the state, and difference between the former level of support and a lower level of support. This means that tuition has gone up much faster than the cost of living because not only has the cost gone up but the state support has gone down.

Presently the state supplies less than one-fourth of the cost of attending our institution. In two decades the state has reduced their support from two-thirds to less than one-fourth. And this cost has been transferred to the citizens of this state who send their kids or pay their way to attend our colleges and universities.

Now here is the clever part. Imagine that the govenor or some other major state official came out and said, "We're going to gradually cut our support of higher education form 66% to less than 25% and transfer that cost to the students and parents." Well, you can imagine the out cry! But no one ever said such a thing, they just gradually did it. And then the same guys who make this decision with every state budget they approve have the gall to dun the institutes of higher learning for tuition increases that out pace increases in the cost of living!

Yes, the blame for increased tuition, fees, and other costs is laid on the colleges and universities. If they only could get those lazy faculty to teach more. Talk about clever. Not only do they not take responsibility, they actually actively blame someone else. We had a president who laid out the numbers for anyone who wanted them, and as you may guess, he didn't last long after he began getting people to point their fingers at the legislature.

Maybe someday people of this state will understand that the public part of their state institutes of higher learning is getting smaller year by year. For years now we have referred to ourselves as a state assisted insitution rather than a state supported institution. And now economic conditions will result in a new round of budget cuts and withheld state support, so the cycle will continue.