Minnesota has allowed its commitment to waver.
June 17, 2007
StarTribune
Editorial
Amid all the shrugs and curses in response to a lackluster 2007 legislative session, two public enterprises went home happy. The University of Minnesota and the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities had their best legislative session this decade, winning increases in state funds of 17 and 13 percent, respectively, over the coming two years.
To that result, we must say, "Keep it coming" -- and not just to the state's two public collegiate systems, but also to the student financial-aid system, which did not have such a good year. For a state whose governor boasted 20 years ago that its claim to fame would be its brainpower, Minnesota has been too stingy with tax support for higher education for a long time. It'll take more than one good session to put legitimacy back into the Brainpower State slogan.
"Minnesota Coasting" was the title of a report that documented that trend, presented last month in Brainerd to a meeting of the Minnesota Association of Financial Aid Administrators. Its author was Tom Mortenson, an Iowa-based national analyst of higher education policy, and a Minnesota native son.
"I gave them a tongue-lashing," Mortenson said of his report. "Minnesota's long-standing leadership in higher education has and is falling apart."
The evidence he cited is compelling, and worthy of concern:
Tightfistedness
Admittedly, the hard knock of the post 9/11 recession and the political appeal of antitax messages have combined to make this a rough decade for public higher education in all states, not just Minnesota.
But only four states -- Colorado (where voters put a constitutional clamp on government growth in the 1990s), South Carolina, Iowa and Mississippi -- made a bigger retreat from 2000 to 2007, in percentage terms, than Minnesota did in the share of personal income it devotes to tax support of higher education. Those states are not ones Minnesotans often aspire to emulate.
It's no secret to Minnesota students and their families that the rising tuition has been the result of the state's tightfistedness toward its colleges and universities. What Minnesotans may not realize is how far above the national average this state's public higher education costs have risen.
Posted by john5091 at June 18, 2007 10:59 AM