Federal relief is critical for Ohio’s public two-year colleges
Congress is focused on the Supreme Court and November elections, but we can’t lose sight of the need for our leaders to agree on and pass a new relief package.
Support for local governments, the unemployed and businesses may get the most attention, but higher education also needs federal relief.
After years of state cuts or flat funding, the school year has started with new financial hits. Enrollment has dropped even as schools face increased costs for online instruction and Covid-safer campuses. A recent analysis by the Chronicle of Higher Education found that higher education has shed some 337,000 workers since February, an unprecedented 7% drop.
The CARES Act, passed by Congress in March, included essential support for colleges and universities, which last spring found themselves managing deserted campuses and quickly switching to online instruction.
But the law contained a critical flaw that must be corrected in the next round of relief: It favored for-profit schools that drive students into crippling debt instead of public colleges and universities that provide a higher quality, more affordable education.
An analysis released in May by the Center for American Progress showed that public two-year colleges bore the brunt of a formula that disproportionately helped for-profits. Our analysis of those numbers showed that, on a per-student basis, for-profit proprietary schools in Ohio got more than twice the amount in CARES Act funds than other schools.
How did this happen?
The CARES Act used a measure called “full-time equivalent” to count enrollment at schools receiving relief funding and weighted funds to favor schools having more full-time students with federal financial aid. This approach shortchanged two-year schools that enroll much higher percentages of part-time students.
A better approach for future relief would be to use “head count,” a measure that more accurately reflects the number of students served by institutions enrolling a lot of part-time students. Because the CARES Act relied on FTE, Ohio’s public two-year schools got $40 million less in relief funding than if Congress had used head count.
Community and technical colleges are important entry points for people looking to continue their education and move up to better-paying jobs. This is especially true in an economic downturn, when people who lose their jobs rely on public two-year schools to upgrade their skills so they can jump back into the workforce. If
Congress doesn’t act, cash-starved schools may not have enough capacity to serve students who need to retrain.
Favoring for-profit schools as the CARES Act did is also troubling because of their poor track record. Dogged by accusations of fraud, they tend to cost more and leave students with higher debt than similar programs offered through public institutions.
Two-year public schools are being hit particularly hard, and they provide the best opportunities for Black, Latinx, low-income and older students, who traditionally have had less access to higher education. One in three community college students is the first in their family to attend college, and over 40% are enrolled parttime.
Congress should structure aid to prioritize these kinds of public schools, which provide the most effective, affordable and accessible opportunities. If private schools are part of the next round of relief, it should be from a separate smaller fund.
Like most states, Ohio has to balance its budget. That’s why we need our leaders in Washington to help save higher education. It’s not the only priority federal policymakers face, but helping save our country’s public postsecondary schools should be a top priority.
Piet van Lier researches education issues for Policy Matters Ohio, a state policy research institute with offices in Cleveland and Columbus.