Group Calls for Steps to Increase College Opportunity, Affordability, Tuition Predictability

 

Darryl G. Greer, Executive Director
Paul R. Shelly, Director of Communications & Marketing

Release: January 15, 2008

Recognizing New Jerseyans' increasing demand for college opportunity and their concern over its cost, today the New Jersey Association of State Colleges and Universities (ASCU) announced immediate steps and policy principles needed to increase college opportunity and affordability in the Garden State.

The Association calls its project to increase college opportunity, crafted as the state confronts severe budgetary constraints, the "New Jersey College Promise."

ASCU advisors encourage the organization's nine member-institutions to accomplish the following, based on the ideas generated by a 21-member panel of national experts and New Jersey executives.

n	Accelerate efforts to reduce the average time it takes for students to graduate at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Examples include: find innovative ways to increase four-year graduation rates; compress four-year baccalaureate degree programs in certain areas to a three-year time frame (without sacrificing education quality or reducing requirements); and coordinate undergraduate and graduate programs to enable baccalaureate/master's degree combinations to be achievable within five years.
n	Index tuition partly to expected growth in New Jersey average disposable family income and set tuition for more than one year at a time.
n	Regularly review college and university cost structures to assure alignment with applicable business best practices, and increase opportunities to collaborate with other institutions.
n	Accelerate application of Sarbanes-Oxley principles to ensure transparency and accountability in all operations.

According to Henry A. Coleman, Chair of ASCU and panel member, "We have identified some workable solutions to the challenge of college affordability, including the need for more predictable increases in tuition, where such increases are warranted. Affordability and expanded college opportunity are clearly what the public wants and what the state needs. We are now ready to bring our ideas to the people in a number of ways, to encourage public feedback and support."

Opportunity, Affordability, Productivity Paramount. ASCU's advisors stressed the need to focus on broadening opportunity and affordability for low-income and middle class families. Yet, early in the deliberations, the group counseled that student aid policy changes would not be the key solution to the affordability challenge. "Our focus is on steps that benefit all students and ensure greater cost predictability," says Stockton College President Herman J. Saatkamp, a panel member.

Productivity, Capacity Paradox. The state colleges and universities in New Jersey are now recognized as number three among the states in bachelor's degree productivity relative to full-time students and dollars invested (see the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems [NCHEMS] 2005 study). Unfortunately, because of state budget challenges - tuition and fees at state colleges have risen to among the highest in the nation. New Jersey is also facing unprecedented and sustained high demand for higher education over the next decade (until at least 2017 according to the NCES). The state currently has a huge net-loss of college bound high school graduates, unmatched by any other state: about 26,000 per year. This adds to workforce and population loss concerns as many current workers retire and move out of state. New Jersey also ranks last in the nation at providing places at four-year public colleges and universities for its high school graduates.

According to ASCU Executive Director/CEO, Darryl G. Greer, in 2007, the state college group decided that the institutions would take decisive action to achieve the promise of college opportunity and affordability. "It is in the state's best interest to increase the number of graduates while maintaining high standards of excellence, increase affordability and commit to expand access, especially to low and middle-income students." "We have the potential to lead the nation in institutional productivity, leveraging the schools' relatively high degree of governance autonomy."

Role for the state. Cognizant of state budget challenges, Greer contends that ASCU can meet the ambitious goals and expectations it is setting, especially through stronger partnership with the state. Together, with college and university commitment, the state can help best by:

n	Funding all expenses that it mandates, or cease to mandate them.
	Transferring certain responsibilities to the institutions in areas where the colleges can be more cost-effective, such as workers' compensation.
n	Amending current law to allow institutions to add to their boards' additional trustees who are not state residents, but who can help the institutions achieve strategic goals.
n	Approving legislation that enables institutions to build or lease facilities more economically and efficiently, such as through design-build arrangements and through innovative partnerships with the private sector which bring private dollars in support of public needs and help to expand college opportunity.
n	Developing a rational plan for the operating and capital support of New Jersey's nine state colleges and universities, which have been consistently and historically underfunded and underbuilt.
n	Academic and business experts on the panel. In addition to New Jersey leaders, the panel that developed the recommendations contained numerous national experts: Patrick Callan, who developed the national Measuring Up state higher education report; Dennis Jones, who heads the Colorado-based organization, NCHEMS, which looked at institutional productivity indicators; David Breneman, a widely published University of Virginia higher education scholar; and Jane Wellman, who heads the Delta Project which is looking at postsecondary education costs. The facilitator, Richard Novak, heads a national center specializing in effective trusteeship and governance.

According to panel member David Jones, partner at Deloitte & Touche, "We saw some of the biggest opportunities for affordability and productivity gains in examination and reform of the institutions' educational delivery model. The challenge will be doing this without sacrificing state colleges' traditional strengths, educational quality and benefits to students."

Another panel member, Mitchell Hersh, who is president and CEO of Mack-Cali Realty Corporation, and a trustee of Montclair State University, says, "We identified a great deal of potential in new kinds of partnerships with private enterprise. For example, partnership with major employers or professions, including those facing severe workforce shortages. This would help the state colleges produce the graduates that New Jersey business, industry and service sectors need."

Phil Kirschner, president of New Jersey Business & Industry Association, says, "I applaud the state colleges and universities and their association for getting beyond a business-as-usual mindset and calling for fresh and strategic perspectives. I expect that what will come out of New Jersey College Promise is something that will effectively serve both the public and the New Jersey economy."

More to come. ASCU will take its plan to diverse public forums over the months ahead, solicit feedback and reconvene the advisory panel in the spring.

ASCU says it fully expects its members to be held accountable for fleshing out principles and achieving goals related to the steps outlined today. In this regard, ASCU will build a stronger constituency for public higher education, including business leaders, alumni, parents and students. ASCU will issue updates on a periodic basis through 2009 to report on progress.