University System of Maryland schools received an “F” for affordability this year, despite a tuition freeze mandated by legislators after a rapid rise in tuition over the past several years.
The rating was the second time in a row the state received a failing grade from the National Center for Public Policy and Education. The organization ranks affordability based on factors such as a family’s ability to pay half a year’s tuition up front without a heavy reliance on loans.
The report said families here must devote a high percentage of income to college costs, and need-based financial aid is lower here than in top-performing states. The report also said the average undergraduate borrowed more than $4,000 in 2005, further contributing to the ranking.
However, university System Chancellor Brit Kirwan questioned how the survey determines the ranking and said the ranking might not be reliable.
“I’m not so sure that this particular report uses a very effective methodology in evaluating,” Kirwan said. “It’s easy to put out a report and say everyone gets an ‘F’. Without a more nuanced and careful analysis of what is really going on, I’m not sure the grade of an ‘F’ can really be interpreted properly.”
But former regent Jim Rosapepe, a College Park resident who won a primary bid to the Maryland Senate on Tuesday, called the report dead-on in its conclusions.
“I think Maryland’s ‘F’ is well earned,” said Rosapepe, who made lowering tuition a priority during his campaign. “We’ve had outrageous tuition increases in the past several years.”
Of four states where the university’s five designated peer institutions are located, three – Illinois, Michigan and North Carolina – also received “F’s” for affordability. California received a “C-“, the highest grade of the five. In total, only seven states received a grade higher than “F”.
But Rosapepe said the problem of Maryland’s expensive education spans beyond this report.
“Systemwide, we now have the seventh-highest tuition for public universities in the U.S.,” Rosapepe said.
This year, tuition cost $7,906 for in-state students here, and the average tuition for a four-year public university in Maryland was $7,058. Compared to states where peer universities such as the University of California, Berkeley, University of Michigan and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Maryland had the second-highest average. Illinois had the highest with $7,166.
The solution to the problem lies in passing a state law guaranteeing sufficient university funding on a per student basis combined with a cap on tuition increases, Rosapape said.
Although Rosapepe’s proposal is a “worthy goal,” Kirwan said, it would be a difficult one to attain.
“I think there would be resistance to adding additional mandated funding to any state entity,” he said, adding it was something the system was trying to achieve.
Despite the 15 percent increase in state funding and freeze on tuition the system secured last year, Rosapepe criticized the efforts of Maryland education officials, staff and students, saying lobbying attempts haven’t been adequate in the past.
“The university constituency ought to be the most powerful in the state of Maryland,” he said. “This should be politically fairly easy to get done, but it requires people actually standing up and fighting for the university.
“They can’t just lay back and wait for someone to take care of them.”
To improve education affordability the university implemented a policy two years ago requiring the system to provide the lowest income students with more financial aid so they can graduate with 25 percent less debt than average students, Kirwan said. Now, they graduate with 25 percent more debt, he said, but under the requirement that would change by the 2009 school year.
“I think we’re the first system in the country to put in such a rigid requirement that looks so carefully at debt levels,” he said.
Though Kirwan skirted the issue of how an “F” ranking could affect the university by reiterating his lack of confidence in the report, Rosapepe said it could lead to qualified students being denied educational opportunities.
“It will undermine the competitiveness of the state because it will price more and more working families out of the ability to send their kids to college,” he said. “College Park in particular could end up as a school for the financially privileged instead of a school for the academically able.”
Contact reporter Sara Murray at murraydbk@gmail.com.
