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Has Spending on Higher Education in MD Paid Off?

Originally published in The Daily Record

By Christopher B. Summers, J. Lowell Stoltzfus
Published on Saturday, January 19, 2002
OP-EDS

Maryland's next governor will have a grocery list of problems to address— most importantly will be the budget crisis the state now faces.  New figures from the non-partisan Department of Legislative Services in Annapolis show Maryland is facing a  $1.7 billion budget deficit. The Glendening-Townsend administration has announced $205 million in cuts as a means of addressing revenue shortfalls and increased expenditures in the state budget. That is a good start, but unfortunately it's too late.

With the dismal budget outlook, the General Assembly is considering delaying the last phase of the 10 percent personal income tax cut that was passed in 1997. It's inaccurate to blame the state's fiscal problems on the September 11th terrorist attack. The present crisis has been seven years in the making, not just a little over seven weeks. The terrorists that struck New York gave no warning, but the Glendening-Townsend Administration has for years consistently ignored warnings about the rate of spending.

Since 1995 spending has increased by roughly 48% while Gross State Product (GSP), the market value of the goods and services produced by the labor and property located in the state grew at only 3.0%- making Maryland one of only twelve states with the slowest growth in GSP during the same period. And the number of state employees increased by 9% compared to population growth during the same period of only 5.4%

Despite warning lights that were flashing on the dashboard for over a year despite calls from legislators to display fiscal restraint due to stock market declines and slowing economic indicators, the Governor signed a budget for this fiscal year that spent $907million more than it collected in taxes, $557 million in precious reserve funds, and another $385 million in rainy day funds.

Some may argue that this is not such a bad thing if we get more and better public services. One might ask at this point ¬ what exactly are we getting for all of this increased spending? A good place to start is higher education, one of the Governor's signature issues.

For the last seven years we've witnessed an administration and Governor who taught at the University of Maryland for 27 years declare education as "The Priority". The solution was for the state to increase the overall higher education budgets and provide Maryland's colleges and universities a 28.6% increase in state funds over four years.

In 1999 the Task Force to Study the Governance, Coordination, and Funding of the University System of Maryland recommended a $788 million commitment to higher education over four years. The Governor's FY2000 budget proposed a spending increase on higher education of $102 million to $1,044 million. Of that increase, Maryland's flagship campus, the University of Maryland received $27 million ¬ a 9.8% increase to $300 million for FY2000.

But with this level of spending, are public institutions of higher learning in Maryland getting better and are Maryland taxpayers getting their money's worth?

For example, here's how Maryland's public universities compare to Virginia's.

Kiplinger's Top 100 Values in Public Colleges 2001 report ranked Maryland's flagship university, University of Maryland at College Park at number 33. Across the river, Virginia had five colleges in the top thirty ¬ with the University of Virginia ranking number 2. All of Virginia's colleges in the top thirty ranking had 4-year graduation rates significantly higher ¬ with 83 percent of UVA students graduating in 4 years compared to 33 percent of University of Maryland students. However, all but one of Virginia's ranked universities had lower in-state tuition costs than Maryland's. U.S. News & World Report, America's Best Colleges 2002 Top 50 National Public Universities listed three Virginia universities in the top 25 but only one for Maryland with University of Virginia at number two and University of Maryland ¬ College Park ranked twenty one.

Despite the enormous increase in higher education spending, Maryland's economy continues to suffer from "Brain Drain", the effect of Maryland's best and brightest students leaving for college and not returning to work in the state economy after graduating. According to a career coordinator at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda and a National Blue Ribbon School of Excellence winner, more than 80 percent of college bound seniors are applying to out-of state colleges with a significant number receiving early acceptance letters of admission.

In his 2001 State of the State Address, Governor Glendening said, "As always, we must start with education.especially higher education. We can all be proud of the renewed emphasis we have given to higher education in the past six years." If these rankings are something to be proud of, Marylander's should start demanding better services for what they're paying.

— J. Lowell Stoltzfus is Senate Minority Leader of the Maryland General Assembly and Christopher B. Summers is president of the Maryland Public Policy Institute.