Good new editorial on Pennsylvania funding cuts to universities

[JPZenger]

Last edited Mon Feb 20, 2012, 04:11 PM - Edit history (1)

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12047/1210466-109.stm

by an Edinboro University professor

Excerpts:


"According to Phillip Trostel, professor of economics at the Margaret Chase Smith Center for Economic Policy, a bachelor's degree holder generates, in current dollars, $471,000 more in income over the course of a lifetime than the average non-degree holder. This increase translates into a sizeable return on investment. For every dollar Pennsylvania invests in a student, the state recoups, in inflation-adjusted dollars, nearly six dollars in return.

Although Gov. Corbett has not stated his agenda explicitly, one can surmise from his actions that he would greatly reduce public support for higher education and transfer the state's educational obligations to private or for-profit online schools. Such a move would be a disaster for Pennsylvania. In the first place, for-profit online schools -- the kind Charles Zogby managed before he became Mr. Corbett's budget director -- have a dismal record of achievement. Despite the copious influx of venture capital and student financial aid, for-profit universities such as Capella, Phoenix and Walden have an aggregate graduation rate of only 22 percent -- an astounding 43 percentage points below the Pennsylvania public college average. The student loan default rate for these online students is a whopping 25 percent.

It is no accident, for example, that the $250 million Mr. Corbett takes from higher education is equivalent to the projected loss in revenue from his elimination of the business asset tax. ...One obvious way to generate more revenue is to close the tax loopholes for Pennsylvania's largest corporations. Chesapeake Energy, for example, the darling of Mr. Corbett's beloved natural gas industry, recently received $173 million in tax rebates on $8.3 billion in profit, for a cumulative effective tax rate of minus-2.1 percent. Other corporations such as Air Products, General Electric, Verizon and Comcast have similar dismal records in generating tax receipts over the last three years."

[JPZenger]

1. WHYY program on PA. college funding cuts

http://whyy.org/cms/radiotimes/2012/02/16/higher-education-in-pennsylvania-what-cuts-mean-for-students-educators-and-the-economy/