From the issue dated November 19, 2004
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Private Colleges Peddle Their Public MissionIndependent institutions step up lobbying for tax dollars as states face tight budgets
Part of an occasional series of articles exploring how colleges lobby in Washington and state capitals Last fall, a year into his tenure as president of New York State's private-college association, Abraham M. Lackman decided the time had come to try to break new ground in the state. He wanted the governor and state lawmakers to allow private institutions, for the first time, to receive public money for construction projects. In a state trying to jump-start its sluggish economy, Mr. Lackman pitched the idea as a generator of jobs, some 8,200 in construction and 3,100 in related service industries. To kick off the lobbying campaign, Mr. Lackman's group, the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities, mailed brochures to state lawmakers to make the case for providing private institutions with $250-million over five years for their capital priorities. Campuses would chip in $3 for every $1 from the state. The commission's materials also highlighted the case increasingly made by private colleges in New York and across the country -- that they, too, serve a public mission that is deserving of taxpayer dollars. The New York commission pointed out, for instance, that one in three New York residents enrolled full time at a private college comes from a family that earns less than $40,000 a year. Private colleges also award most of the state's degrees in a handful of programs that prepare students for careers in which New York faces a shortage of workers, such as engineering and technology. "We're an enormous asset, and a resource for economic development for the state," says Mr. Lackman, who became head of the commission in 2002. Like many other private-college associations nationwide, New York's has recently stepped up its lobbying efforts to protect programs that benefit its students and institutions from the budget ax of governors and lawmakers, who have been facing tight fiscal times. In 2003-4, the state's private-college group spent $94,991 on state lobbying, a 71-percent increase over 2002-3, and more than three times the $25,143 spent in 2001-2. "When the presidents hired me, they wanted a higher profile for the commission," says Mr. Lackman, who joined the group after several years as the top aide to the New York State Senate Finance Committee. In addition to pressing for capital dollars, the commission mounted an aggressive campaign this year to fight proposed cuts in the state's need-based aid program, long a top priority of the group. "My personality," adds Mr. Lackman, who makes $216,000 a year, "is to be very proactive." Flexing Political Muscles In addition to fighting for existing programs, private colleges are also seeking new kinds of money from states. Like New York, some states, such as Pennsylvania, are looking for capital funds. (Maryland and New Jersey are the only states that currently provide public financing for construction projects at private institutions.) In Colorado, some private colleges successfully fought to be included in a new financing system for higher education, in which most direct appropriations to public colleges are being replaced with stipends given to students. Eligible private institutions will be able to receive some state funds for the low-income Colorado residents they enroll if the colleges also agree to meet certain performance goals. In Washington State, private institutions sought to compete for state funds to offer academic programs that prepare students for careers that are in high demand, such as nursing. Lawmakers approved the idea this year, but Gov. Gary Locke, a Democrat, vetoed the plan. As private colleges work to flex their political muscles in higher-profile ways, the fight for scarce resources has led to increased tensions between private colleges and their public counterparts in many places. The Minnesota Private College Council, for example, last year ran a series of newspaper, radio, magazine, and billboard ads calling on state lawmakers to make need-based student aid a top item in the budget. The campaign irked some public-college officials, who preferred that lawmakers focus on providing sufficient operating funds for public universities rather than the state grant program, in which more than half of the funds go to private-college students. Even where public and private higher-education counterparts remain on good terms, private-college officials have sought new approaches to pitching their priorities in the face of proposed cuts. Tina M. Bjarekull, president of the Maryland Independent College and University Association, says her group has begun a "myth campaign" to fight misconceptions about private colleges among members of the General Assembly. She says that lawmakers in her state and elsewhere are requiring more and more data from private colleges as proof of their public purpose. "There was a time when your case had to be made by relationships, by explaining your case for funds to different leaders," Ms. Bjarekull says. "Now that is not good enough. You have to provide justification for why every program is important to the state and to institutions." Making the Pitch Those kinds of justifications are at the root of Mr. Lackman's efforts in New York. Mr. Lackman goes to meetings with lawmakers, state officials, journalists, and others laden with charts and graphs. He highlights how the commission's 105 members serve many low-income and minority students and how they benefit the economy by attracting out-of-state students and conducting research that creates jobs. Four-year private colleges, the commission says, serve more than 98,000 students who received money from the state's need-based Tuition Assistance Program and more than 80,000 students who got federal Pell Grants. That is more than the number of students who received money from those programs at the four-year campuses of either of the state's public-college systems, the State University of New York and the City University of New York. (Combined, however, the state's public universities do enroll more students who benefit from the aid programs than the private colleges.) The private colleges also generate $40.2-billion annually in economic activity, supporting 500 research centers and employing 131,000 people, according to the commission. Over four years, the more than 20,000 out-of-state freshmen who came to New York in 2000 to attend a private college were expected to contribute $1.1-billion to the state's economy. Mr. Lackman and commission officials use that information to press for a wide-ranging agenda. In addition to advocating for capital projects and the Tuition Assistance Program, the commission also fights for state programs that provide direct aid to private institutions, that give private colleges money to help students from disadvantaged backgrounds get academic and counseling support, and that help to increase the number of minority students who study science and technology. What's more, Mr. Lackman says that private colleges have had to pay increasing amounts of attention to regulatory matters over the past several years. He says he works to make sure that state rules focus on measuring an institution's outcomes rather than trying to dictate its inputs. For instance, he is working to modify state teacher-education requirements so that institutions have more flexibility in how they meet state goals, without having to follow prescriptive rules that spell out such things as the ratio of part-time to full-time faculty members that institutions must employ. To carry out their agenda, Mr. Lackman and commission officials have blitzed state lawmakers this year with numerous visits, 1.4 million e-mail messages from students and other supporters, and reams of promotional materials, such as a 24-page booklet and a series of 15 postcards with facts about private colleges titled "Build on Strength, Investing in Independent Higher Education to Advance New York State." State Rep. Ronald J. Canestrari, a Democrat and chairman of the State Assembly's Higher Education Committee, says that he and many other legislators have found the wealth of information persuasive, especially the facts about how many low-income students attend private colleges. "Abe Lackman's education campaign was very thorough, was very effective, and brought to the attention of most of us the multifaceted role that independent schools play," Mr. Canestrari says. "We were just not aware." The information campaign, Mr. Canestrari adds, led many lawmakers who were originally skeptical of the commission's capital plan to support it. In August the Legislature approved a budget that included $175-million in capital funds for private colleges, along with separate pools for SUNY and CUNY. Gov. George E. Pataki, a Republican, vetoed the plan, even though he had endorsed the concept of giving public dollars to private colleges for construction. In explaining his veto, the governor said that lawmakers had "changed dramatically" the structure of the program he had proposed, which would have forced private and public universities to compete for $350-million in state funds for campus projects rather than granting each sector a set amount, as lawmakers proposed. Lawmakers have until the end of December to try to override Mr. Pataki's veto or to work out a compromise. Mr. Lackman says he is "cautiously optimistic" about prospects for an agreement. He says he has heard from several state private-college groups, such as those in North Carolina and Ohio, who are watching how the issue plays out as they weigh whether to pursue a similar campaign. Public-Sector Skepticism Within New York, though, not everyone is happy with the capital plan for private colleges. Barbara Bowen, president of CUNY's Professional Staff Congress, a union that represents more than 20,000 faculty and staff members, argues that the state should meet the needs of its public institutions before giving construction aid to private colleges. Some of CUNY's buildings, she says, need urgent help. For example, she says, water has poured into laboratories at a City College science building, whose exterior is supported with steel braces to prevent chunks of concrete from falling. "When the history of funding public higher education is so dire, it is completely wrong to allocate precious public dollars to private colleges," Ms. Bowen says. "Any new monies that can be identified in the higher-education sphere have to go to public education." Matthew Goldstein, CUNY's chancellor, says he initially reacted to the commission's capital plan for private colleges like Ms. Bowen. But now he says he views proposals to create capital programs that could benefit both public and private universities as an opportunity. Requiring institutions to provide matching funds to receive some state capital dollars, Mr. Goldstein says, will help spur the university to become more aggressive about attracting private donations, a goal system officials have been pursuing. Plus, "the amount of money being proposed for the private colleges and universities is a very, very small fraction that does not dramatically affect us," Mr. Goldstein adds. "Would I like to have it all for us? Absolutely. But I understand there are competing needs." In Pennsylvania, meanwhile, state lawmakers and public colleges have generally remained cool to the idea of providing state capital funds to independent institutions. Don L. Francis, president of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Pennsylvania, argues that the state should aid private colleges partly out of fairness. In 1992 state officials approved a capital program that provided public colleges money for construction if they matched the dollars they received from the state. Suddenly, Mr. Francis says, public institutions were competing with private colleges for many of the same sources of funds from private businesses, foundations, and other donors that private colleges had largely had to themselves. "That did affect the fund-raising ability of our institutions," Mr. Francis says. As public and private colleges become more alike in how they are financed, he argues, the state should begin to treat them more similarly in order to keep a balanced playing field. But some public-college officials don't buy that argument. Travis J. Reindl, director of state-policy analysis at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, says public and private institutions mostly do not compete for the same private dollars, especially since many fund-raising efforts focus on alumni giving. And, he adds, there is enough money in private markets to go around. Mr. Reindl says he might support giving state capital funds to private institutions if they would be willing to be held accountable for meeting state goals, as public institutions are. But he doesn't expect a rush of private colleges seeking public dollars because many independent institutions seem to want to keep as much distance between themselves and the state as possible. Focus on Student Aid Jonathan A. Brown, president of the Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities, is among those who have little interest in seeking capital funds or fundamentally altering private colleges' relationship with the state. "We haven't changed our orientation since our organization was founded," Mr. Brown says. "We care about students first and are primarily focused on Cal Grants," the state's need-based aid program. In New York, though, private-college officials do not believe their primary focus of protecting student aid has been overshadowed by their push to also seek capital funds. In fact, the commission's campaign to fight cuts Governor Pataki proposed to the state's Tuition Assistance Program was among the most effective of the private colleges' efforts this year. Supporters of the aid program, including students, parents, and college officials, could quickly generate e-mail messages to their state lawmakers by using software provided on the commission's Web site. Commission officials spread the word about their electronic-advocacy program by creating public-service announcements to run on campus radio and television stations and by sending 35,000 postcards to colleges for display in cafeterias and elsewhere and an additional 100,000 to families of aid recipients. The final state budget excluded the cuts Mr. Pataki proposed, and Mr. Lackman believes the 1.4 million e-mail messages generated through the commission's Web site between January and August this year were important to the effort. "Most legislators I talked to were astonished by the amount of volume we generated," Mr. Lackman says. And he knows how they feel. Mr. Lackman wanted to read the messages that aid supporters were sending, so he asked to receive copies of them as they poured in this summer. He says his BlackBerry pager buzzed almost constantly, alerting him every time a new message arrived. The noise could be heard across the Lackman house throughout the night, and it was not long before his wife relegated the BlackBerry to the garage. Mr. Lackman laughs as he retells the story, the victim of his own success. A LOOK AT PRIVATE-COLLEGE LOBBYING GROUPS Forty states and the District of Columbia have associations that represent private, nonprofit colleges and universities. Here are two of them: Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities President: Jonathan A. Brown Membership: 77 institutions, representing 52 percent of all private, nonprofit four-year colleges in the state Total spending on state lobbying: $69,736 for the 2003-4 budget year Recent accomplishment: State lawmakers eased cuts in the state's need- based Cal Grant program that had been proposed this year by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican. Private colleges fought his plan to reduce the maximum annual award for private-college students to $5,462 from $9,708. The final state budget includes a maximum award of $8,322 for private-college students. Recent disappointment: Governor Schwarzenegger this year vetoed legislation that would have created a structure for annually assessing how well public and private colleges meet statewide higher-education goals. Private-college officials worked together with public-college counterparts and state lawmakers to craft a plan that included reporting requirements that they all supported as being reasonable and essential to improving accountability. Interaction with public colleges: Budget pressures have recently strained the relationship between private and public colleges. They still work together on promoting several issues, like improving accountability in reasonable ways and increasing state support for nursing and teacher-education programs. But the private institutions were on their own in fighting for increases in Cal Grants for their students. Private-college officials were also disappointed to be excluded from a long-term agreement on budget and other matters negotiated this year among Governor Schwarzenegger and officials of the University of California and California State University. New lobbying tactic: Instead of scheduling many meetings with lawmakers in their offices in Sacramento, private colleges are placing a greater priority on getting their state representatives to visit the campuses. Legislators are often rushed in the Capitol, Mr. Brown says. Being on a campus allows them to focus more on the college's needs and exposes lawmakers to greater numbers of students and the excitement that tends to come with a campus atmosphere. *** Maryland Independent College and University Association President: Tina M. Bjarekull Membership: 18 institutions, representing almost 86 percent of all private, nonprofit four-year colleges in the state Total spending on state lobbying: $118,000 in the 2004 legislative year Recent accomplishment: State lawmakers last year rejected some of the most severe cuts that had been proposed for a program that provides state grants directly to private colleges. Maryland's Department of Legislative Services had recommended that the General Assembly slice the program's budget in half, to $22-million, and alter a formula so that the colleges would no longer receive funds for students from outside of Maryland. Lawmakers decided to cut the direct-grant program by only $11-million, to $33-million, and to continue giving private colleges money based on their enrollments of both in-state and out-of-state students. Recent disappointment: Under state guidelines, private colleges are supposed to receive direct grants that equal 16 percent of what a group of 10 public institutions receives. Private colleges have fought to restore their funds to that level, which has not been reached for several years. They now get 13 percent of what the public institutions receive. Interaction with public colleges: Private- and public-college officials meet weekly to discuss legislative priorities and to try to forge a common agenda. Together they press for increases in need-based financial aid and for new programs in high-demand areas, like teacher education. Private-college officials do most of the lobbying for their direct grants, but public-university officials have written letters in support of increasing state funds for that program. New lobbying tactic: Private-college officials began pressing a "myth campaign" last year after hearing state lawmakers voice many misconceptions about independent institutions and the students they serve. The colleges produced brochures and other promotional materials highlighting facts to dispel such myths as the one that they do not serve students from at-risk populations. In response, the materials pointed out that students from underrepresented minority groups composed 23 percent of undergraduate enrollment at the state's private colleges in the 2002 fiscal year, and that the enrollment of black students at those colleges was growing three times as fast as the colleges' general enrollment.
SOURCE: Chronicle reporting
http://chronicle.com Section: Government & Politics Volume 51, Issue 13, Page A22 | |||||||||||||||
Copyright © 2004 by The Chronicle of Higher Education