Funding is a key component of keeping Indiana’s seven public colleges and universities competitive with private and other Midwestern public universities, that is why when the Indiana Commission for Higher Education makes a funding recommendation, university presidents listen.
The CHE most recently recommended to the General Assembly that $123 million from the $1.7 billion funding pot be set aside for incentives to achieve higher college graduation rates. This is a laudable goal, as our state needs many more college graduates.
CHE data shows that Indiana ranks 43rd out of 50 states in the percentage of adults with a bachelor’s degree or higher. The CHE states on its website, "For Indiana’s citizens to have a better lifestyle and to be competitive in the global economy, more citizens need the skills and knowledge that come with degree completion and college credentials." Amen to that.
The CHE also documents the "education pipeline," which chronicles where our freshmen high school students end up. For every 100 Indiana ninth graders who stay in the education pipeline, just 23 will graduate college, and that may take up to six years of study. The national average is 30 students.
For some reason, whether family economics, available jobs that lure young people out of the quest for a college degree, or the lack of a family tradition of obtaining college degrees, Indiana students as a group are not providing themselves with the higher-education skills that businesses need to compete regionally, nationally or globally.
It’s ironic that a quick walk around the campuses of Purdue or Indiana University at Bloomington will reveal that students from all over the world are enrolling at those campuses to get a quality education. Yet, Indiana students don’t see the wonderful opportunities in their own backyard.
This CHE incentive to boost graduation rates makes sense, seeing how state taxpayers are subsidizing the universities and it is in the taxpayers’ interest to have more state residents not only attend college, but earn degrees. But the General Assembly and CHE should keep in mind that college students are adults and are entitled to make up their own minds if they want to continue pursuing a degree. So being heavy-handed with incentives may not be the total answer.
A technique that may also produce positive results would be increased funding for educating the parents of junior high school and high school students how their children will be handicapped for life in the global marketplace if they do not pursue a college degree or technical certificate. We think the parents of all those foreign-born students at IU and Purdue have gotten that message.