Aug 03, 2008 - 04:06:11 CDT
Often a political campaign produces verbal volumes of empty rhetoric. But there's also the welcome event of genuinely good ideas coming into the debate.That's the case with the differing plans on helping tuition-battered college students. Gov. John Hoeven and Sen. Tim Mathern, opponents for the governor's job, recently have been describing their plans.
Hoeven favors state grants to qualifying students. Mathern has the idea of making refunds of tuition for each year a graduate who is willing to stay in North Dakota lives and works here.
The price tags are not small. Hoeven's idea would raise spending on grants from the relatively modest $6 million in the present program to $40 million. Mathern's refunds would cost $11.1 million to begin with in 2010 and rise gradually to $89 million eight years later.
Both are incentive plans. Though they come at it in different ways, Mathern and Hoeven want to help pay for the education of people who have a future in North Dakota. Hoeven adds the caveat that students qualifying for grants must have gone to a North Dakota high school or have family here.
It's good to have both candidate and incumbent trying to contribute positive plans to help money-strapped college students.
It would be possible to combine the best aspects of each plan.
Both grants and refunds could aid students.
Mathern's refunds are based on tuition already paid. But there's the matter of making college affordable while tuition is being paid. Grants could help a person make it through school. And tuition is only one cost of several. There are fees, some of them hefty. There may be dorm expenses. And there certainly is the outrageous cost of books, especially in some courses of study.
And we have to face reality:Not all students will remain in the state. Tying a tuition-aid plan strictly to residency is not going to work in some cases. Life happens. People have to relocate. Maybe some will return. College graduates are not a captive audience.
Another fact is that while the governor and candidate can propose fine ideas, the decision on what to do is in the hands of legislators.
The good thing is to have ideas and plans compete in the time leading up to the 2009 session.
The tuition rate of a college has drawn the lament of students as long as colleges have been around. Students should acknowledge that higher education in North Dakota is still, relatively, a bargain. And while students would love it if tuition were abolished, there's value in having to pay for something worthwhile. Between scholarships, grants and loans, affording college can be done.
But the Legislature can gather ideas for how to help make it affordable to the greatest number of those who need it.
Senator Tim Mathern wrote on Aug 4, 2008 8:20 AM:
DuWayne Hendrickson wrote on Aug 3, 2008 9:43 AM:
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