Editorial: Taft must take proposal seriously
Issue date: 2/10/05 Section: OpEd
- Page 1 of 1
"No Ohioan should be denied a college education because they cannot afford it."
No truer words were ever uttered by Ohio Gov. Bob Taft despite the fact that the state's higher educational budget has been dwindling for years.
Now in Taft's recent "State of the State" address, he did a good job of talking about the support he would like to give and improvements he would like to make to higher education funding.
In Tuesday's address, Taft spoke of the promises and problems with Ohio, its economy and its future. Included in this list was the current state of disrepair for Ohio higher education's funding, or lack thereof.
We look to Taft to bring us out of the rubble and prove that under his leadership, all Ohioans will receive that college education.
Only six paragraphs worth of material were dedicated to Taft's "commitment" to higher education. During that time, he managed to outline his hopes and plans to expand enrollment, increase graduation rates and restrict tuition at Ohio public universities and colleges.
He spoke of increasing enrollment and graduation in college in order to advance the state.
Primarily, his focus was on funding. Taft promised increased funding and eligibility for the need-based college-grant programs. He also touched upon creating a reduced-rate loan program for students, though it would not be incorporated into the state's budget.
Finally, he came to his challenge for the state colleges and universities to "keep tuition increases to a minimum by becoming more productive and more collaborative," something we had begged our own university officials to do just two weeks ago. In addition, Taft has also proposed a 6 percent tuition cap, "to be exceeded only for the purpose of funding needs-based scholarships."
This proposal we applaud. As the students who continually have to scrounge for the funds to fulfill the yearly tuition increases, we find this reduced cap refreshing. Though it is suspicious that Youngstown State University's 9 percent increase did come just weeks before this announcement by Taft.
Now that Taft has explained his seemingly good intentions for the future of higher education, we give him our own challenge: show us you are serious about improving the state of funding for higher education.
Make sure your budget does include money for needs-based scholarships. Continue (or start) to find ways to maintain that funding so that schools do not have to resort to any sort of tuition increase, let alone within a 6 percent cap. Make it so students won't have to rely on the reduced interest loans you propose, and can walk out with their diplomas debt free.
No truer words were ever uttered by Ohio Gov. Bob Taft despite the fact that the state's higher educational budget has been dwindling for years.
Now in Taft's recent "State of the State" address, he did a good job of talking about the support he would like to give and improvements he would like to make to higher education funding.
In Tuesday's address, Taft spoke of the promises and problems with Ohio, its economy and its future. Included in this list was the current state of disrepair for Ohio higher education's funding, or lack thereof.
We look to Taft to bring us out of the rubble and prove that under his leadership, all Ohioans will receive that college education.
Only six paragraphs worth of material were dedicated to Taft's "commitment" to higher education. During that time, he managed to outline his hopes and plans to expand enrollment, increase graduation rates and restrict tuition at Ohio public universities and colleges.
He spoke of increasing enrollment and graduation in college in order to advance the state.
Primarily, his focus was on funding. Taft promised increased funding and eligibility for the need-based college-grant programs. He also touched upon creating a reduced-rate loan program for students, though it would not be incorporated into the state's budget.
Finally, he came to his challenge for the state colleges and universities to "keep tuition increases to a minimum by becoming more productive and more collaborative," something we had begged our own university officials to do just two weeks ago. In addition, Taft has also proposed a 6 percent tuition cap, "to be exceeded only for the purpose of funding needs-based scholarships."
This proposal we applaud. As the students who continually have to scrounge for the funds to fulfill the yearly tuition increases, we find this reduced cap refreshing. Though it is suspicious that Youngstown State University's 9 percent increase did come just weeks before this announcement by Taft.
Now that Taft has explained his seemingly good intentions for the future of higher education, we give him our own challenge: show us you are serious about improving the state of funding for higher education.
Make sure your budget does include money for needs-based scholarships. Continue (or start) to find ways to maintain that funding so that schools do not have to resort to any sort of tuition increase, let alone within a 6 percent cap. Make it so students won't have to rely on the reduced interest loans you propose, and can walk out with their diplomas debt free.