Higher Education

Jason Rosenbaum captures a funny moment from a Nixon press conference about the agreement announced yesterday to freeze tuition at the state's four-year public colleges and universities.

Last week, the U.S. House voted to end its subsidies of private lenders for college loans, and shift the billions of dollars which had previously gone to corporate profits into direct loans and grants for students.  The Obama Administration and Democratic leaders estimate that the change in policy could save $80 billion for the federal government. 

But something happened on the way to cutting corporate subsidies and streamlining government spending. The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne:

The bill, which passed 253 to 171, would allocate about $80 billion over the next decade for new loans, community colleges, school construction and early childhood programs without increasing taxes or adding to the deficit. How? Instead of paying bankers to provide loans for which they bear no real risk, the government would make the loans directly...

The only knock on the proposal is ideological: that government is "taking over" the student loan program. But it's already a government program. The bill simply eliminates corporate welfare...

Instead of focusing on how the bill advances values typically regarded as "centrist" -- government efficiency, pay-as-you-go budgeting -- the banks' defenders bury the specifics behind abstract discussions of "big government." Yet I'd venture that middle-of-the-road Americans prefer that their tax money go toward education rather than to padding the profits of financial firms.

Lt. Gov Peter Kinder and House Budget Chair/State Auditor hopeful Allen Icet would love it if Missourians completely forgot about their disastrous press conference from two weeks ago, in which Kinder and Icet cited "rumors" and "third-hand reports" of public universities and colleges being "extorted" to expand their offerings for health care professionals.

In the press conference Kinder said, "I have no proof of [my allegations] or first-hand knowledge."  He also said, per The Star, "he hadn't contacted any university administrators about the issue and didn't believe it was part of his 'due diligence' to check with them."

House Budget Committee Chairman Allen Icet presented his plan for distributing federal recovery money to colleges and university yesterday, and it didn't go quite as he'd hoped.  Here's a summary of the Icet plan from the News-Leader's Chad Livengood:

Under his proposal, Icet took a standard formula for funding the universities based on size and cut University of Missouri's four-campus system by 30 percent, totaling $14.6 million.

Icet then redistributed that money to the other 10 universities. Ten of the schools got a 45 percent increase in funding. For MSU, it means about $4.4 million more.

But Icet's plan proposed giving Southeast Missouri State University 144 percent more, nearly tripling its share of the stimulus from $4.8 million to $ 11.7 million.

This plan to shift the money away from the MU system didn't sit well with Rep. Steve Hobbs (R-Mexico) and other members of the committee, who didn't understand Icet's unilateral decision to shift the cash. Livengood's whole story on the meeting is worth a read, but his Twitter message from the meeting tells you everything you need to know: 

Rep. Icet has no real explanation as to why he took from University of Missouri and gave to SEMO State.