State plan to fund higher ed. unveiled

ANNAPOLIS - After two years of work, a state commission unveiled the early version of a new model for funding higher education in the state that would aim to balance tuition, state funding and financial aid.

The new plan is the result of two years of effort by the Bohanan Commission - named after its chairman, Del. John Bohanan (D-St. Mary's) - to find a new model for funding higher education in the state. Although in-state tuition has been frozen three years in a row, projected budget deficits of about $1 billion for the next several years mean the state needs to find innovative ways to maintain quality education while keeping tuition from skyrocketing.

The new plan, which says the state should spend about $701 million more than planned on higher education over the next 10 years, "looks at student aid, state investment and tuition as a package," said Norman Augustine, the vice chair of the commission and member of the Board of Regents.

Old funding models compared state funding for the university to the support its peer institutions received from their states. But those models were contradictory because the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, for example, has high tuition and low support from the state, while the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill has low tuition and high support from the state.

The new model, as outlined in yesterday's report, compares Maryland to the states it competes with for employers.

"The old funding model of looking at institutions our institutions are competing with was fine, but it sort of showed an educator's bias," said P.J. Hogan, who was the original chair of the commission before resigning from the state Senate to take his current position as the University System of Maryland's lobbyist.

According to the plan, which won't be finalized until December, both general higher education funding and financial aid for students should be greater than that of three-quarters of the states Maryland competes with - many on the East Coast - and tuition should be less than the average of the universities in those states.

But, the plan comes with a steep price tag: $701 million. Augustine said the commission's members realized the money isn't in the state budget at the moment.

The state recently made almost $350 million in budget cuts for this year, and the Department of Legislative Services - the state's non-partisan policy analysis group - is projecting deficits around $1 billion a year for the next several years, including $660 million the state says it will receive if slots are legalized in a referendum today.

"That's a major sum of money," Augustine said. "It's a 10-year plan. But it's what we need to compete."

The model is the latest in a series of efforts to rework how higher education is funded in the state. Last spring, two tuition reform bills were handed over to the Bohanan Commission for examination. One would have capped the amount the university system could raise tuition in any given year at 4 percent and would require legislators to fully fund the schools. Another would have prevented the university from raising tuition on students during their college careers, instead having schools change tuition rates before each entering class actually enrolls at the university.

Elements of both bills made it into the early draft of the plan. While saying the latter of the two plans would be too risky and possibly force universities to make severe cuts in services during an economic downturn, the commission did recommend linking the amount tuition could increase to median family income in the state and creating a specialized fund to ward off tuition increases.

It also recommends allowing one or two universities to set up a pilot program.

"We're going to allow an institution to purse [a tuition guarantee program]," Bohanan said. "We've got to crawl before we walk with that."

The commission, which is officially called the Commission to Develop the Maryland Model for Funding Higher Education, was formed two years ago after Hogan pushed for it. It was originally supposed to deliver its findings last December, but received a one-year delay.

Other members of the commission include Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown (D); Secretary of Management and Budget T. Eloise Foster; Sen. Ulysses Currie (D-Prince George's), chair of the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee; Del. Norman Conway (D-Wicomico and Worcester), chair of the House Appropriations Committee; and presidents and trustees of other public universities in the state.

Bohanan believes the model being developed could serve the state for a long time.

"If this effort is done right, our model should guide higher education in the state not just for the next few years, but for the next 10, 12, 14 years," he said.

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