By Susan Tebben
Affordability and equity are at the top of the list as higher education officials look at their operating budget for the next two years, and it’s up to the state to help.
State leaders speaking for community colleges and state higher education in general at Tuesday’s House Finance Subcommittee on Higher Education pushed on the need for more high school-to-college and college-to-workforce pipelines to attract students not only to Ohio’s education institutions, but to return after leaving for a number of reasons.
The subcommittee is currently reviewing the operating budget, and has spent the last week talking to representatives ranging from the Ohio History Connection, the state libraries and Ohio Citizens for the Arts, along with Tuesday’s meeting with those in higher education.
Randy Gardner, chancellor for the Ohio Department of Higher Education, said shortening the bridge from high school to college can happen through an expansion of the College Credit Plus program, which allows high schools students to take college classes during their high school years.
“We still have standards, standards are important, but we want to provide as much access as possible to allow as many students as possible to take advantage of this,” Gardner told the House Finance Subcommittee on Higher Education.
But higher ed officials see a change in the demographics of “college-age” students, and want to bring in the 1.5 million adults that have taken college courses but haven’t finished, and those who may have never seen post-secondary education as an option.
“We want to do more to bring them back… and to be involved in higher education because we think it’s not only good for them, it’s good for the state,” Gardner said.
In Gov. Mike DeWine’s executive budget proposal, state support to colleges and universities — called the state share of instruction subsidy (SSI) — would increase 1.8% over the biennium. That subsidy has stayed at the same level over the last few years, representing $1.98 billion in 2019 and $1.94 in 2020, before 2021’s estimated increase to more than $2 billion.
Also a part of the move to attract diversified college students, Gardner said $4.5 million has already been implemented in the education budget to fund community colleges over the next two years. The money was placed in the budget through the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund. The fund distributed monies received from the U.S. Department of Education as part of COVID-19 relief.
Community colleges need all the help they can get, according to Jack Hershey, of the Ohio Association of Community Colleges.
Hershey told the subcommittee the state has seen a 10% drop in enrollment in community colleges, with a 14% drop specifically in white male enrollment and 19% drop in Black male enrollment.
“The most encouraging news is that despite the enrollment decline we have seen, overall interest has increased over the pandemic,” Hershey said.
Data shows motivation for getting more community college education has shifted, Hershey said, focusing more on the need to pay bills and take care of financial needs.
“This suggests to us that in the aftermath of the pandemic, individuals want a job, and they want it quickly,” Hershey said. “Marketing a Bachelor’s degree or even an Associate’s degree to them would be a mistake.”
Those that decide to get a Bachelor’s degree or Associate’s have to deal with issues of affordability, which is a priority for the state and the budget proposal, Gardner said.
“I think that it is possible to make the statement that over the last five years and perhaps even increased over the last two years, a higher education in Ohio, or degree or a credential, is more affordable than it was five years ago,” Gardner said.
Scholarships like the Ohio College Opportunity Grant and Choose Ohio First are set to increase under the budget proposal, with OCOG to get a raise of $500 per student, and at least 2,000 new scholarships under COF, if approved by the legislature.
Gardner also said College Credit Plus has sped up the way in which students get their college degree without spending the equivalent of a four-year stint at a college or university.
“I’ve met students who graduated from college before they graduated from high school,” Gardner said, adding that about 2,600 Associate’s degrees were granted in the state in the last year before those students graduated high school.
Despite the affordability Gardner says is increasing in the state, he pushed back on a question from the committee suggesting that free market rules and business competitiveness be applied to state universities and colleges. He said he has received the question from legislators in the past, and his opinion remains the same: Because the two-year and four-year public colleges and universities are regulated by the state and use taxpayer dollars, the state should help out.
“I do believe it’s fair to say that the state government has an obligation to be a part of that affordability,” Gardner said. “I do believe we have an obligation as state leaders…that we should be able affordability and providing guidelines and some guard rails around potentially increasing costs of tuition or of fees and other things that might deter some students from gaining a college degree.”
Gardner said the state’s higher education institutions have “about the right balance between oversight, support and freedom and flexibility for them to make decisions on their college campuses.”
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Critics take aim at HB 6 coal subsidies
A 2019 energy bill at the heart of a historic Ohio scandal has plenty of critics and it contains plenty of provisions of which they’re critical.
There’s more than $1 billion to prop up two nuclear reactors that supposedly can’t compete on their own. And there’s $102 million in annual revenue guarantees for FirstEnergy, a company that federal authorities say helped bankroll a $61 million scheme to pass House Bill 6 — the legislation that contained the guarantees.
A Franklin County judge has stopped the collection of the nuclear bailout and legislation that would repeal it has been filed. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost sued to end the revenue guarantees — and FirstEnergy later agreed to forego them.
But part of the law that still stands always seemed like a non sequitur for what was originally touted as a “clean energy” bill.
House Bill 6 also provides $233,000 a day in subsidies to prop up two 66-year-old coal plants — the Kyger Creek Plant in Cheshire, Ohio, and the Clifty Creek Plant in Madison, Indiana. Almost $100 million has been collected for the effort so far, according to a subsidy tracker maintained by the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, the state’s official utility watchdog. READ MORE
Cavs’ Larry Nance Jr. says LGBTQ discrimination protection bill is about human rights
Like many Ohioans, the Cleveland Cavaliers’ Larry Nance Jr. was caught by surprise when he learned the state has no law protecting LGBTQ people from discrimination.
When he found out Ohioans could be evicted from their homes or denied service in a restaurant or other business solely because of their gender identity or sexual orientation, he couldn’t believe it, Nance Jr. said in an interview Monday.
“I thought there’s no way that’s true,” he said. “But after looking into it, I saw that it was true, and it was appalling to me that as a society we’re not past that and better than this.”
Amid last summer’s protests for racial justice, Nance Jr. said he began doing more research into issues that matter to him.
After being contacted by the LGBTQ advocacy organization Equality Ohio, Nance Jr. said he took up the cause of the Ohio Fairness Act, legislation seeking to extend discrimination protection to the LGBTQ community. A version of the bill has been proposed but not passed in each Ohio general assembly for more than a decade. State Sen. Nickie Antonio, D-Lakewood, has sponsored the bill each new assembly she’s been in. READ MORE
Judge to consider if Ohio woman’s Capitol riot charges are ‘crimes of violence’
A federal judge Tuesday delayed his ruling on whether to allow the pre-trial release of an Ohio woman accused of organizing a paramilitary unit to storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta asked an attorney for Jessica Watkins, who commanded a self-described militia, and prosecutors to submit arguments as to whether the destruction of government property qualifies as a “crime of violence,” as prosecutors argued.
His answer, he said, would act as precedent for the eight other charged members of the the Oath Keepers paramilitary group, and possibly other defendants charged in the Capitol riots as well. READ MORE
