Paterson Set to Embrace Student Loan Plan
July 21, 2008
Gov. David A. Paterson plans on Monday to embrace one of the central recommendations of a report highly critical of the state’s higher education system, asking the Legislature to create a low-cost student loan program to make New York more competitive with other states.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Paterson, Marissa Shorenstein, said that “hundreds of thousands of students would be eligible for low-interest loans,” and that the administration planned to introduce legislation for the program in next year’s budget. She declined to provide any further details.
The report, scheduled to be released on Monday by the New York State Commission on Higher Education, said New York was one of the few states lacking such a program. One commission member estimated that students here typically paid 9 percent to 12 percent interest while those in Texas paid 6 percent.
There are currently $2 billion dollars in private loans, which can be more expensive than government-subsidized loans, given to students attending the 1,000-plus public and private institutions of higher education in New York.
Establishing a low-cost loan program is one of about 10 major recommendations in the commission’s final report, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. It also proposed an infusion of $3 billion for research, the hiring of 2,000 new teachers and significant deregulation to make it much easier for individual colleges and universities to raise tuition.
The commission, appointed by former Gov. Eliot Spitzer in May 2007, expressed “grave concerns” that years of insufficient funding had eroded the quality of the State University of New York and the City University of New York, citing, for example, a backlog of $5 billion in critical maintenance projects at the 87 campuses that make up the two systems.
“While making progress on many fronts, they face a chronic problem,” states the 105-page report, the result of more than a year of study by a 50-person team of lawmakers, academics and union representatives. “Too little revenue, too little investment and too much regulation.”
The final report mainly expands on recommendations made in a preliminary report released in December, but comes in a starkly different economic and political climate.
Given the difficult fiscal situation facing the state — with tax revenues falling as the financial industry continues to be hammered — even some members of the commission admitted privately last week that it was unlikely that lawmakers in Albany would support all the initiatives, many of which require legislation and money.
But the report cast the importance of restructuring and investment in urgent tones, raising concerns about New York’s continued preeminence nationally and its ability to compete globally.
“In the last decade, Jiangsu Province in China has built over 50 universities, enrolling over 700,000 students,” the report says. “This is but one example of an old script: governments raising the quality of life of their citizens by investing in higher education. But there is a new version to this old script: The competition is global and it is intense.”
Mr. Spitzer was widely seen as a champion of higher education, but since his resignation, many on the commission and throughout New York’s higher education orbit have expressed concern about whether Mr. Paterson, who was Mr. Spitzer’s lieutenant governor, will embrace the cause.
“Governor Paterson was in some early meetings where we received our charge,” said Hunter R. Rawlings III, chairman of the commission and president emeritus of Cornell University. “The question is how much of a priority he is going to make this in a tough fiscal year.”
In a statement about the report, Governor Paterson said that his administration “is deeply committed to ensuring that we provide the best education services to our citizens.”
“We will begin to look for ways to finance some of these recommendations which require state funding,” the statement said, “as well as begin to implement many of the recommendations that do not require funding.”
When Mr. Spitzer was first elected, he proposed establishing a $4 billion endowment for the public colleges and universities, taking a page from the Ivy League schools where he was educated. He wanted to pay for it using money from the state lottery, a controversial proposal that ultimately brought discussion of the endowment to a stalemate.
There is no mention of the lottery in the commission’s final report, which generally does not address financing for the initiatives.
Some of the report’s recommendations require legislation, others could be initiated through executive action and a few could be enacted by the college and university leadership.
Source: NY Times Read the complete article here
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