Jersey's Higher Education System Must Have a Plan

 

Susan A. Cole, President, Montclair State University

The Star Ledger
February 20, 2007

This year was a banner year for higher education investments across the nation, including an overall national increase in state appropriations of 7 percent. Those hikes ranged from a high of 18.7 percent in Alabama to a low of 1.9 percent in Indiana. Many of New Jersey's direct competitor states provided double-digit appropriation increases to higher education - Virginia, 16.4 percent; North Carolina, 13.9 percent; Maryland, 13.2 percent; New York, 10.8 percent.

Left out of the good year were only three states, North Dakota, Montana and, dead last in the nation, New Jersey, with a decrease of 2.7 percent. How could this be in the nation's most prosperous state?

Is it that New Jersey does not have the resources to support higher education? I find that a difficult proposition to sustain, even accepting the difficulties of the state's budget circumstances. From fiscal years 2000 to 2007, the state budget has grown by 54.6 percent; gross income tax receipts have grown by 59.7 percent; corporate business tax revenues have grown by 66.7 percent; and sales and use tax receipts have grown by 54.5 percent.

In the same period, the direct state appropriation for New Jersey's nine state colleges and universities has increased by a mere 1.2 percent. Similarly, while state debt has increased by 117.8 percent over the period from 2000 to 2007, not a penny of that increase was incurred on behalf of the colleges.

Clearly, money has been spent, but not on those institutions that are the state's majority baccalaureate educators. Without an accepted public policy and a plan for higher education in New Jersey, there is little incentive to invest in it. Such a plan would answer the fundamental questions that any state government must ask if it believes higher education has an essential role to play in the economic and social well-being of the state.

Some of the most important of those questions are: How many high school graduates should the state's public institutions be able to serve? How much graduate and professional education should be available in state? To what extent does the state wish to attract highly qualified out-of-state and international students to its institutions?

In addition to a broad array of traditional and emerging arts and science programs, what specific program areas must be expanded to meet state needs? What fields should be designated as strategic targets for excellence? How much should it cost to educate a student at the state's institutions? How much of that cost should be borne by the student and how much by the state? What should be the source of revenue for state support? On what basis should that revenue be allocated to the state's institutions? How will the resources to build and maintain the facilities of the state's public institutions be generated? What should the state's expectations be in regard to educational quality, graduate rates and diversity?

In April 2003, New Jersey Reporter published an article by me titled "What Really Needs to be Fixed in the Public Higher Education System." At the time, the state was in the throws of debating the advisability of the Vagelos report produced by Gov. James McGreevey's Commission on Health Science, Education and Training. The principal recommendation of that commission concerned the merger of Rutgers, the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Now, almost four years later and into a new administration, the issue is being revisited.

Back in 2003, I argued that, whatever one might think of the merger recommendations, the report did not offer a comprehensive plan for public higher education. New Jersey, I reasoned, needs more than expanded research in the health and life sciences; it needs to provide access to high-quality college and university opportunities to thousands more students in a broad range of fields, and it needs a comprehensive and strategic agenda for the state's schools.

In the four years since the original Vagelos debate, I can report definitively that the state has not moved any closer to adoption of a public policy agenda in regard to higher education, nor has the state made any progress in advancing a plan for the support and development of its public higher education institutions.

On the positive side, and even in the absence of public policy, the public colleges and universities have continued to use existing resources and exercise the autonomy granted them in 1994 to improve their ability to meet the state's needs by expanding their facilities, improving their equipment, increasing their enrollments, enhancing the quality and reputation of their programs, developing new programs in areas of the state's strategic needs and continuing to make substantial contributions to research, workforce development and community outreach. They certainly have not accomplished as much as they might have with adequate support, nor as much as the state requires, but they have done remarkably well under difficult circumstances.

New Jersey has had extraordinary good luck in the overall management of the state colleges and universities since enactment of the 1994 restructuring act. Have the institutions been perfect and error-free? Of course not, but under the considerable autonomy granted to the public boards of trustees, the schools, within a range of good to excellent, have organized themselves effectively to respond to evident state needs. They have done so without adequate state support or reward for their efforts. They have succeeded because their boards have been committed to the missions of their institutions, their administrations have been competent and resourceful, they have been fortunate in the recruitment of strong and dedicated faculty and their students have been willing to pay among the highest public tuitions in the nation to get the education they need.

But New Jersey cannot afford to go forward indefinitely without any basis for state appropriations to higher education other than continuation of the status quo and without a strategic agenda. Institutions that grow in academic excellence, that serve increased numbers of students, that improve graduation rates, that expand the diversity of their campuses, that improve their facilities receive absolutely no recognition or support for those accomplishments from the state.

In fact, in the face of a huge demand for places at our public institutions, institutions that are attempting to provide access to more qualified New Jersey students are penalized by the state, receiving a declining appropriation per student.

The policies needed in New Jersey are not that complicated. Many other states have developed excellent strategic agendas and rational policies. Unlike other more intractable problems, what still needs to be fixed in higher education can be fixed.