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Colorado Passes Higher Education Voucher Program
By Brittny A. McCarthy
As public colleges and universities nationwide experience decreased state support, institutions and state lawmakers struggle to find solutions to rising costs and declining revenues. At the end of a contentious 2004 legislative session, Colorado governor Bill Owens signed into law a college voucher program that will remove direct state funding of individual institutions. Beginning in fall 2005, the new program will instead give vouchers to students to spend at colleges and universities. Some claim the policy is pioneering, while others call it a reshuffle of state support. The program will result in state money going directly to private institutions for the first time in Colorado.
The Colorado Commission on Higher Education Web site claims the voucher program was designed to increase public awareness of the extent to which the state offsets the cost of undergraduate education. But some legislators and higher education officials say the law is meant to avoid spending limits imposed by a Taxpayers Bill of Rights passed in fall 1992. The voucher bill, they argue, was the only way to save public higher education institutions from collapsing from the devastating effect of increased costs and decreased revenues (and the governor's veto of a proposed 8 percent tuition increase).
Also known as the College Opportunity Fund, the voucher bill removes tuition from restrictions imposed by the 1992 law and gives Colorado's institutions of higher education more flexibility in spending and revenue generation. But the bill introduces some new problems, says Dana Waller of Front Range Community College, a member of the AAUP's Committee on Government Relations. The program treats vocational-technical and community colleges the same way it treats research institutions. It ignores the growing costs associated with graduate and professional education, new technology, and research programs.
The voucher program may hurt public institutions as private colleges benefit from this new state support. In addition, the law allows for the voucher to be reduced at any point by the legislature. Initially, the law allocated $2,400 stipends for students attending state universities and $1,200 for those enrolled in any of three legislature-approved private schools, but anticipated budget cuts in 2005 are already threatening to decrease the $2,400 voucher to $1,600.
Critics believe the law is a continued sign of disinvestment in public higher education. Over the past three years, the legislature has cut the state's higher education budget from $756 million to $591 million. Waller calls the law a "shell game" that merely shifts dwindling dollars and does not work out the problems it is intended to resolve. "Moreover, it looks like Colorado's higher education institutions are in for further cuts," she comments. "As a result, we are losing some of our best and brightest faculty members every day and the quality of higher education in Colorado is increasingly at risk."
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