Students Would Have 4-Year Plan
By Philip Rucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
The daughter of a factory worker and a homemaker in a rural Illinois town, Heather R. Mizeur was the first in her family to attend college. She paid her own way through school, relying on a combination of part-time jobs, loans and scholarships.
"Each year, as college administrators finalized new rates, I lived on the edge," she said. "I never knew if the tuition hikes would be severe enough to force me out of school."
Now a Maryland delegate, Mizeur (D-Montgomery) has introduced legislation to make Maryland one of the first states to institute a long-term tuition plan for its public universities. If it passes, Mizeur's bill would permit undergraduates to lock into a four-year tuition plan, helping families budget for college costs and cushioning them against tuition increases.
The Maryland Truth in Tuition Act is gaining broad support from key legislators in the General Assembly. Mizeur was among several proponents who testified yesterday before the House Appropriations Committee.
The level of uncertainty regarding tuition costs is a "gut-wrenching" burden to middle-class families, Mizeur said.
"Without being able to budget for the entirety of their education, many students may begin school only to be unable to finish their education, losing out on the promised return on investment," Mizeur said.
She likened her tuition proposal to a fixed-rate mortgage.
"Just as adjustable-rate mortgages have turned out to be a bad idea in the housing market, adjustable-rate tuitions are a bad idea in higher education, too," Mizeur said.
About 77 percent of Marylanders support creating a long-term tuition plan, according to a statewide poll Mizeur recently commissioned from Gonzales Research.
The proposal is modeled after a plan introduced a few years ago in Illinois, which pioneered the long-term tuition plan in public universities.
Emily Herman, 18, a senior at Northwood High School in Silver Spring, testified in support of the bill.
"It is only fair to be able to anticipate what payments will be expected of us before we're bound to them," Herman said.
The University System of Maryland supports Mizeur's bill in concept but recommended that the proposal be taken up first by a state legislative commission that is developing a new model for funding higher education, said Patrick J. Hogan, a lobbyist for the university system.
"Can Truth in Tuition work? Absolutely," Hogan said. "It can work, but state funding needs to be predictable."
House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel) said that "there's a lot of merit" to Mizeur's bill but that he thinks it makes sense for the legislative commission to study the proposal and perhaps adopt it as part of a higher education funding solution.
Del. John L. Bohanan Jr. (D-St. Mary's), who chairs the commission, is a co-sponsor of Mizeur's bill. Bohanan said building reliability into the tuition structure is important. Further, he said, the measure would force the university system to "get a lot more disciplined and do some long-term planning."
Hogan said the university system could institute Mizeur's proposal, but only if a funding mechanism is established to address unpredictable economic factors that otherwise would cause tuition increases.
From 2002 to 2004, Mizeur said, the university system raised tuition by as much as 33 percent because it was faced with a budget deficit and received less state funding than requested.
Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) has proposed holding the line on public university tuition this fall for the third year in a row. In his proposed budget, O'Malley included funds to offset an anticipated 4 percent tuition increase, although that money could be in jeopardy as lawmakers seek ways to cut next year's budget.
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