Toward a New Beginning
The global recession has highlighted the vital nature of college completion and affordability.
“We will provide the support necessary for you to complete college and meet a new goal: by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.” – President Barack Obama, Feb. 24, 2009 “I challenge state, college and university leaders to put affordability front and center as they chart a path forward. I challenge them to follow the example of the University [System] of Maryland, where they’re streamlining administrative costs, cutting energy costs, using faculty more effectively, making it possible for them to freeze tuition for students and for families.” -President Obama, April 24, 2009 With these two statements, President Obama articulated two key challenges that the higher-education community faces: completion and affordability. The global recession has highlighted the vital nature of these concerns. It’s universally accepted that the U.S. must improve educational attainment if it wants to rank among the world’s leaders in creativity and innovation in the knowledge economy. At the same time, the recession has also underscored the clear correlation that exists between the two. For many, the cost of pursuing a college degree can short-circuit their progress toward that goal.
These are issues the University System of Maryland (USM) has embraced as priorities. Five years ago, as an earlier economic downturn resulted in a sharp decline in state support for USM, our Board of Regents launched the Effectiveness and Efficiency (E&E) initiative. E&E involved a systematic re-examination and re-engineering of both our administrative functions and academic processes to reduce costs, enhance access, protect quality and raise students’ completion rates.
This effort has removed nearly $100 million in direct costs from our budget, While experiencing significant additional savings through cost avoidance. In return, the state has invested new funds in USM to expand capacity and reduce the gap in success rates for low-income and underrepresented minority students. USM’s four-year and six-year graduation rates are well above national averages for public universities, and time-to-degree across the system is at its best level ever, averaging less than four and a half years.
Since the first full year under E&E, enrollment at USM institutions has increased by 15,000 students. During this same fouryear period, tuition for in-state, undergraduate students has remained constant. Although there is no universal approach that would be effective for systems and campuses nationwide, our actions have broader applications and have been recognized in many national publications as a model, singled out as a “success story” by the U.S. Department of Education, and – as noted above – endorsed by President Obama.
While actions to enhance access and affordability are vital, so are steps to bolster the completion rates of students. Here again, however, affordability plays a critical role. According to the education department, 400,000 qualified high-school graduates put off attending college each year because of cost. In addition, about one in five college students end up dropping out, primarily because of financial stress. And the average college graduate faces nearly $21,000 of debt upon graduation.
We need to attack the affordability issue through financial aid policies, grant practices, student loan regulations and innovative approaches.
