State tackles higher education financing

Without goals, one expert said, a meaningful finance system cannot be devised.

Dennis Jones, the president of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, said the state’s Master Plan on Higher Education needs to incorporate goals and graduation targets, for instance, to make financing meaningful.

The Joint Committee for the Master Plan on Higher Education held its sixth public hearing on the status of higher education as California faces a $20 billion deficit for the next fiscal year that will force more cuts to critical services including higher education.

Assemblyman Ira Ruskin, D-Redwood City, is the co-chair of the committee and hopes the state will use the findings of the six hearings and hours of testimony into a strategy on how to create access to and fund higher education in the future.

Through the course of the six hearings Ruskin has realized the Master Plan has values it endorses but no clear goals.

For instance, the Master Plan does not tie funding to completion or transfer rates, Ruskin said.

Yesterday’s topic of discussions included how to connect financing with statewide goals for higher education; trends and current practices in the state’s three public segments; and trends and best practices on how higher education is financed nationally.

"We will have to examine short- and long-term implications since, although we are coping with a budget deficit now, higher education is the basis of our state’s future economic development and quality of life,” Ruskin said.

Several experts testified at the hearing, including Herb Carter, chair of the California State Board of Trustees; Don Gerth, president emeritus of California State University Sacramento; Jack Scott, chancellor of California Community Colleges; and Jones, president of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, a nonprofit group based in Boulder, Colo.

Jones was also critical of how the state funds higher education segment by segment. The CSU, University of California and California Community Colleges are all funded separately at the state level. Jones told the committee yesterday that financing needs to be broadly implemented across all three segments.

The state also lacks policy leadership, Jones told the committee. The California Postsecondary Education Commission has too few resources and too narrow a charge, Jones said. The commission integrates policy, fiscal, planning, data and program analyses about education issues beyond high school to the state Legislature and governor.

But the commission lacks the authority to implement real change, Jones said.

Sacramento State’s President Emeritus Gerth echoed Jones’ sentiment.

"The coordinating body needs to be reinforced. It needs to have real muscle,” Gerth said.

If goals are set in the Master Plan, the question is who monitors it, Ruskin said.

Steve Boilard of the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office said the Master Plan was developed at a time when the economy was different, students were different and technology was different.

"The state has never developed any specific goals,” Boilard said. "Goals should be established for when the state is ready to reinvest in education,” he said.

Ruskin co-chairs the Joint Committee on the Master Plan for Higher Education with state Sen. Gloria Negrete McLeod, D-Montclair.  

The committee was convened in November to review the Master Plan, engage the public in a conversation about the system of higher education in the state and complete a needs-based assessment on what the state will require from the system of higher education in decades to come, according to Ruskin’s office.  

During its first five hearings, the committee has focused on topics including access, affordability and financial aid, coordination and articulation, academic and financial accountability.

Yesterday’s hearing was the last to include witness testimony. The final meeting of the joint committee, which will be scheduled for early next month, will allow the committee to review testimony, findings and data and determine next steps.

The Master Plan was established in the 1960s and acts as a blueprint for the state’s higher education system. It was last reviewed more than a decade ago.

Bill Silverfarb can be reached by e-mail: silverfarb@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: (650) 344-5200 ext. 106.