Demise of the College Opportunity Fund
Tuesday, May 20, 2008Written by: Captain Haddock
With recent talk of voucher legislation affecting K-12 schools,
Schools say COF is too complicated. While most eligible students get the stipend, more than 3,000 this year didn’t apply and needlessly paid up to $2,600 more for their education or defaulted on their bills.
"The bottom line is that COF was a noble goal that met reality," said Tony Kinkel, president of
Pikes Peak Community College inColorado Springs . "It’s time to get rid of it."David Skaggs, a former Democratic congressman and now executive director of the state Department of Higher Education, said he’s received only complaints about the funding system.
"There’s a consistent theme . . . all in the ‘We avoided TABOR but other than that this isn’t worth it category.’ "
The initial rationale for COF – exempting tuition from the TABOR revenue cap and providing support to low income students — was laudable, even though its initial supporters might have gotten a little too caught up in the market-based ideology behind it. But however well intentioned, it never flew. The process to apply for COF is complicated, so many students never even bothered.
Providing an affordable higher education to all
May 20th, 2008 at 10:54 am
While the COF certainly has problems, they would seem to be fixable, if only to keep tuition out from under the TABOR restrictions. What amazes me is that the colleges/universities were not actually paid more COF money, even when they attracted (or did not attract) students. That is not only contrary to the policy concept, but seems to be against the law. That is the part I would get upset about. Similarly, it would seem that the application process could be eased in practice, and made nearly automatic. I agree that the ideological idea that this would stimulate increased college going and access by low income students was always a somewhat unrealistic hope.
May 21st, 2008 at 10:36 am
I largely agree about the COF: Mend it, don’t end it.
May 21st, 2008 at 7:13 pm
It is interesting that the many of the same people who believe most strongly in equalized funding for K-12 education are philosophically against the COF, even though that’s the function it is designed to accomplish for publicly funded higher ed.
Prior to the COF, the research universities received the most per pupil funding from the state…in the case of say, CU-Boulder, close to three times per student what a community college received. Now, where do the most affluent students attend college? At the research universities. And where do the poorest go to school? At the community colleges and places like Metro, which get the least $$$ on a per student basis from the state.
I know relatively few politicians who would support the proposition that we should fund affluent school districts like Cherry Creek or Boulder with two or three times the tax dollars per student as we would fund Mapleton or Pueblo. But it seems to be OK to fund the higher ed institutions who serve affluent students at two or three times the rate as those that serve the less advantaged.
By having the funding go to the student rather than the institution, COF was to address this imbalance by balancing the subsidies out. Affluent kids still got a bigger subsidy, but it was closer to what the poor kids would get.
But:
1. The per state funding for the COF, thanks to TABOR, dropped from a planned $4700 per student to under $3000 by the time it was implemented, making it relatively useless as a way to make college entry affordable;
2. The state created a somewhat cumbersome student registration process for the COF, and the high schools were too inept to explain it to their kids; and
3. It was called a “voucher”, which immediately tainted the discussion, even though COF was based on what is generally considered the most successful program in history in opening up higher education to a mass population, the GI Bill, which was, gasp, a voucher system!
So the whole thing lost momentum.
If the state moves back to the old system, the most affluent kids in the state will once again get the biggest hidden subsidies; the populists can pretend that they are providing poor kids more “opportunity” by offering lower subsidies but higher “financial aid”, and nothing will change. And other than poor kids, who won’t know they are getting screwed, everyone will be happy.
The issue isn’t about a misguided faith in free markets…its about equity.