New Mexico's Free Tuition Plan: IHE article

[polly_mer]

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/09/19/doubt-and-hope-about-new-mexicos-free-tuition-plan

The state's flagship university, the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, has a six-year graduation rate of 47 percent, according to federal data. Central New Mexico Community College has a three-year graduation rate of 20 percent. Only 23.2 percent of Latinos in New Mexico have a college degree. And the state has a degree-attainment gap of 27.2 percentage points for Latino students, according to data from the Education Trust.

In other news, while this year's enrollment numbers don't appear to be out yet, UNM has been seeing substantial decline in enrollment in the past few years with a 7.5% decline last fall.  As the IHE article states, bringing more people to campus might help enrollment, but it's not clear that large numbers of individuals will be getting the support they need to succeed in college. 

New Mexico is a geographically big, poor, rural state where it's pretty clear that getting a college education and then using it to have a better job other than teacher or police officer means leaving one's family and community unless one's community is already Albuquerque/Rio Rancho/Los Lunas, Santa Fe, or Las Cruces.  The Atlantic's article that is subtitled "Some Native kids who leave to pursue education find themselves stuck between a longing to help their community and the lack of viable employment back home" rings true for New Mexico

The recent article in The Atlantic regarding the personal emotional cost to climbing the SES ladder also resonates strongly in New Mexico.

[Morris Zapp]

Thanks for sharing this.  My parents live in New York STate and I've heard mixed reviews on the Excelsior Promise program there.

Joined this conversation for more pragmatic reasons, however -- Namely, how do you think such wide-ranging reforms will affect the economics of higher education in struggling institutions, including lower tier LAC's, etc.  Has New Mexico basically wiped out any competing institutions in the state?  Will this spread to other states and how will this affect all of us down the line?
What do you all think?

[apl68]

New Mexico is a geographically big, poor, rural state where it's pretty clear that getting a college education and then using it to have a better job other than teacher or police officer means leaving one's family and community unless one's community is already Albuquerque/Rio Rancho/Los Lunas, Santa Fe, or Las Cruces.  The Atlantic's article that is subtitled "Some Native kids who leave to pursue education find themselves stuck between a longing to help their community and the lack of viable employment back home" rings true for New Mexico

And yet these rural areas do need SOME college grads in certain fields, and can't always attract them.  That's where targeted scholarship efforts come in.  Arkansas has greatly improved the percentage of rural libraries with qualified MLS staff through two things.  First, a library must have a degree-holding librarian to collect state aid to libraries.  Part of the aid is per-capita, part of it takes the form of an MLS grant intended to support salaries of professionally-qualified librarians.  It gives libraries both an incentive and some of the means to hire a fully-qualified librarian.  The amounts we're talking about here are modest in most towns.  We get the $18,000 a year MLS grant and a good deal less per capita.  That's still enough money to be worth a small institution's while.

Second, the state has a scholarship program for library staff who want to earn their MLS.  If you pay for 12 hours worth of classes at an accredited MLS program to show you're in earnest, and promise to work at a public library in-state for at least a certain amount of time afterward, the state will fund the rest of your degree.  This makes it possible for a rural library that can find a local person who's committed to staying in the area and getting the degree to grow their own librarian.  It's how I earned my degree.  I can guarantee that if it weren't for the above two programs our town would have no professional librarian.

Mind you, it is possible to game the system.  Small libraries will sign interlocal agreements with a neighboring library with an MLS librarian, declaring themselves a "branch" of that library.  The neighboring library can then collect per capita state aid on the junior partner's behalf.  Such a marriage of convenience can get a small library a few thousand dollars' worth of per capita money without having an MLS librarian.  The state library knows what's going on, but tolerates it as a cost of doing business.  And there's always the hope that a marriage of convenience interlocal agreement might evolve into a viable regional partnership--something the state also wants to encourage.

I don't know what targeted efforts like this would look like for other professions, but in the library world this sort of targeted aid can go a long way toward getting rural communities the professionals they need.

[spork]

Thanks for sharing this.  My parents live in New York STate and I've heard mixed reviews on the Excelsior Promise program there.

Joined this conversation for more pragmatic reasons, however -- Namely, how do you think such wide-ranging reforms will affect the economics of higher education in struggling institutions, including lower tier LAC's, etc.  Has New Mexico basically wiped out any competing institutions in the state?  Will this spread to other states and how will this affect all of us down the line?
What do you all think?

I'm in a state that has launched "free" community college that is limited to students who, in terms of credits, have full-time status. Also it is tuition-only. So restrictive, but not as restrictive as New York's Excelsior program. It is apparently causing a drop in enrollment at the state university's non-flagship campuses. I work at a non-prestigious private university and have been trying to sound the alarm that we will probably see an effect too, but so far people aren't willing to pull their heads out of the sand.

[writingprof]

I work at a non-prestigious private university and have been trying to sound the alarm that we will probably see an effect too, but so far people aren't willing to pull their heads out of the sand.

I don't know. Free K-12 public schools haven't hurt the non-prestigious private high schools in any of the towns I've ever lived in. Indeed, it's the reason for their existence! I expect that free public college will have a similar effect.

Also, I hope the people who work at those "free" colleges like even more ridiculous and heavy-handed political oversight, because they're about to get it.

[spork]

I work at a non-prestigious private university and have been trying to sound the alarm that we will probably see an effect too, but so far people aren't willing to pull their heads out of the sand.

I don't know. Free K-12 public schools haven't hurt the non-prestigious private high schools in any of the towns I've ever lived in. Indeed, it's the reason for their existence! I expect that free public college will have a similar effect.

Also, I hope the people who work at those "free" colleges like even more ridiculous and heavy-handed political oversight, because they're about to get it.

The declining number of children in the region has forced many private K-12 schools to reduce the number of classrooms per grade from three to two. In the immediate vicinity, we have had two Catholic K-8 schools close in the last two years. Fewer students enrolled in K-12 means fewer students enrolled in post-secondary ed.

New Mexico's population in 2019 is estimated at 2.10 million, a gain of only .05 million over the previous decade -- basically flat, while Colorado's population is booming. The state apparently has a problem retaining younger residents (i.e., college graduates) and the population is aging. And residents are spread out over a huge area.

So I'm going to guess that increasing college enrollment in terms of absolute numbers, college graduation rates, and in-state employment for graduates is going to be difficult in New Mexico.

[Hibush]

New Mexico's population in 2019 is estimated at 2.10 million, a gain of only .05 million over the previous decade -- basically flat, while Colorado's population is booming. The state apparently has a problem retaining younger residents (i.e., college graduates) and the population is aging. And residents are spread out over a huge area.

So I'm going to guess that increasing college enrollment in terms of absolute numbers, college graduation rates, and in-state employment for graduates is going to be difficult in New Mexico.

New Mexico is an interesting case. While it has a flat population like many northern and rural states, there is basically no private-college scene. St. Johns with <400 students is the only national one, Santa Fe Art & Design with 700 is the biggest. The rest have <1000 students combined. The demographic changes affect that sector much less than it does in e.g. MA,  PA, OH, MN.

New Mexico also has that strong family and community pull. Young people, and their families, don't want them to go away to college and then come back. The ones who are not fleeing permanently want college in the community. New Mexico is in reasonable shape for serving that structure because there are many compass-point universities as well as satellite campuses of the flagships. The state university system can serve the state well for producing a college-educated society in all these small towns, and give those towns more hope for a strong future. It isn't cheap to have that many small outposts, but it is easier to commit state funding than it is to fundamentally change the culture.

[polly_mer]

Joined this conversation for more pragmatic reasons, however -- Namely, how do you think such wide-ranging reforms will affect the economics of higher education in struggling institutions, including lower tier LAC's, etc.  Has New Mexico basically wiped out any competing institutions in the state?  Will this spread to other states and how will this affect all of us down the line?
What do you all think?

As Hibush wrote, New Mexico is very different from the Midwest or the Northeast and that's not just the Spanish-speaking heritage.  Funding the public institutions at higher rates would probably pay off better for the people of the state than giving individuals more scholarship money based on personal characteristics with the overhead that entails.  With such a high percentage of Pell grant recipients at most institutions in the state (even the flagship is 38% Pell recipients) and the popular lottery scholarships now only covering about 60% of tuition, this looks like a program that is more designed to appeal to certain voters than an investment in the state higher education landscape.  In addition, as the article wrote,

For community college students, tuition is only 20 percent of the total cost of attending college, according to Tiffany Jones, director of higher education policy at the Education Trust, a nonprofit that works to close opportunity gaps.

"In a place like New Mexico, where the average tuition for a two-year college is $3,000, that means if you qualify for [a Pell Grant] your tuition costs are already covered," Jones said. "This new policy doesn't translate to any additional support for you."

That's a problem in a geographically big state where the nearest community college might be more than an hour away and the nearest four-year institution may be three hours away.  New Mexico has cheap housing in most of the state, but being unable to live at home while going to college is non-starter for many New Mexico families.  That extra $5k/year in rent is a lot when the whole family's annual income is under $30k.


The Wikipedia page with the list of institutions of higher ed is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_New_Mexico.  For example, Santa Fe Art and Design just closed.  I'd never even heard of University of the Southwest and a brief internet search indicates that most of their students are online.

New Mexico is urbanizing slowly and does draw in new transplants (about 60k people had a different state of residence a year ago), which is a source of much frustration all around.  For example, while New Mexico has a lower-than-national-average HS graduation rate and a lower-than-national-average bachelor's degree rate, it has a national average PhD holder rate at 11.6% (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_educational_attainment).  For those who have been following the news for President Trump's visit to New Mexico, Rio Rancho is not a suburb of Albuquerque; it is geographically near Albuquerque and is the third largest city in the state at 90k.  People move from out of state to Rio Rancho because it has good jobs that require specialized skills.  As the Wikipedia page states, Rio Rancho has expanded greatly to that 90k from a paltry 10k in 1980.

As an example of some of the differences between a big, rural Western state and what people might be picturing from experience with the Midwest or the Northeast, Socorro County (home to New Mexico Tech and a place where I've spend years of my life) has 18 000 people in a geographic area that is the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined (6,649 sq mi versus 1,212 sq mi + 5,567 sq mi per Wikipedia).  The city of Socorro itself is about 9000 people, which is not quite top 20 city in the state by population, although I can remember 20 years ago when 10k was often good enough to be the last city on the top 10. 

Socorro County has exactly one institution of higher education: New Mexico Tech with 1500 undergrads and 500 graduate students.  For comparison, Wikipedia lists Rhode Island as having 12 institutions of higher learning and 38 in Connecticut.  Super Dinky had a brother college literally two miles away (both started as single sex institutions in the 1800s) and a total of 60+ institutions within 100 miles.  Those institutions include a good many S(mall)LACs and small, but increasingly not LAC in mission.

As the name indicates, NMT is a STEM school that often ranks top 10 in specialized categories including best buy for the money.  NMT has a strong general education program (https://www.nmt.edu/academics/coreclasses.php), but there's no institutional message related to a university education being humanities-based or even liberal-arts-based.  Music, theatre, and art are a part of campus life with many participants, but they are not academic areas where people sign up for substantial credit.

"New Mexico Tech has jokingly been called a research institution that happens to have a university. In reality, it's not far from the truth. This is beneficial to getting Tech students ready for the future, since the vast majority of research projects have a great level of student involvement." (https://www.nmt.edu/research/organizations/index.php).  New Mexico Tech draws from national and international populations due to their specialized education and their state school tuition.  https://www.nmt.edu/finaid/tuition.php indicates that an in-state full year of tuition and fees with room and board on campus is $22k, but College Score Card indicates the average annual cost is $14k with 30% of students receiving Pell. 

Why write so much about NMT?  Because the stereotype of a small school is so wrong.  NMT is one of the three research universities in NM (the other two are UNM as the flagship and NMSU in Las Cruces) and has federal line items of tens of millions of dollars to do specific research at facilities that are unique enough to be those line items.  NMT is Carnegie classified as a small Master's institution because of how few doctorates are awarded each year.  However, because of the inclusion of undergrads on true research projects that matter (often even senior projects are externally funded with true deliverables to a company), individuals in Socorro County who want a more typical college experience have to go farther away.  The about 50% graduation rate looks terrible until you realize that people who decide engineering or any related STEM is not for them pretty much must transfer because even psychology and business majors must still pass two semesters of calculus as well as intro lab sciences with no "for poets" options.  As an interesting side note, NMT is often at or near the top of the list of public institutions that send bachelor's graduates to PhD programs.

In comparison, Western New Mexico University in Silver City, a mere 150 miles away from Socorro when the road is open because there is literally one route to get there and a good half is not interstate, is Carnegie classified as a larger Master's institution with 3k total students in a town of about 10k.  Western began as a normal (teaching) school and keeps that identity as many compass-state points do.  WNMU operates the Gallup Graduate Center.  Gallup NM is 250 miles away if the road is open or 350 miles away if one must go via the interstate.  Gallup is a city of 22k, which puts it right outside the top ten NM cities by population; Gallup is bordered by tribal lands.  Wikipedia helpfully points out that Gallup is the largest population center between Albuquerque and Flagstaff along historic route 66 (300+ miles).

In addition to the WNMU Gallup Graduate Center, UNM-Gallup exists.  UNM-Gallup is a two-year institution as are most of the UNM outposts across the state.  New Mexico has colleges named as compass points, but they are not part of one consolidated larger system, unlike the University of Wisconsin system or the University of California system.  In addition, the size of institution drops rapidly in NM from UNM at 30k to under 5k by the sixth largest institution.   The endowments also drop quickly from a solid fraction of a billion dollars to listing under 10 million dollars and even a few listings of under a million dollars. 

[Aster]

Any state that is willing to actually cough up significant amounts of additional funding to put back into Higher Education is a good thing.

By now, most of us wince when we hear the phrases "tuition free" or "free college".  We have read the fine print, and we know that many states using the term either are greatly mis-characterizing or flat-out conning the general public.

New Mexico is seeming to do more. It's wanting to put aside a decent chunk of extra cash (at least $25 million) into it's proposed assistance program. For a low population state like New Mexico, this is a lot more than what other states have been doing. New Mexico is not  for example punting "free college" to community colleges to deal with. Nor is it punting "free college" to MOOC's or a 3rd party, edu-business contractor.

[polly_mer]

The reality has started: https://www.insidesources.com/nm-governors-plan-to-provide-free-college-meets-resistance/

[Steve Pearce, long-time NM politician who lost the governor's race]"You do the math and just divide $35 million by 55,000 — you get $636 per student per year," he said. "If you look at current tuition and college costs, books, room and board, it's about $23,000 a year. So it's a little bit of a bumper sticker and bait-and-switch."

[Aster]

It will be interesting to see if the naysayers are complaining...

A. As a diversionary tactic so that they can justify not diverting any additional funding into New Mexico colleges

or

B. Because they feel the governor really needs a lot more funding


But when someone says something like:
"the governor's proposal "would look good on a bumper sticker," but would have little benefit for the majority of people, who actually don't want to go to college,"

I think we have our answer.

[polly_mer]

But it is indeed New Mexico; a fair number of people don't want to go to college and would be much better served by having an apprenticeship or something else that would allow them to stay in the rural areas where they want to live doing things they will enjoy enough to be employed.  Serving the people does not mean forcing everyone through more school activities that merely reinforce the divide between the classroom and normal people's lives, especially considering that New Mexico does not have good graduation rates at most levels.

New Mexico would be better off if more money just went to the colleges and universities to support everyone who wants to go instead of having additional overhead for individual students and siphoning off money in bureaucracy unrelated to student needs.  The money being suggested really isn't sufficient if the goal is to have more college-educated New Mexicans who will stay in the state.  The money being suggested is being allocated poorly by focuses only on tuition instead of the full cost of attending an institution likely a good hundred miles or more from home.

[Aster]

New Mexico would be better off if more money just went to the colleges and universities to support everyone who wants to go instead of having additional overhead for individual students and siphoning off money in bureaucracy unrelated to student needs. 

Yes. I  believe that all experienced professional educators are on the same page here. Unrestricted funds are much better used (in general) than tightly restricted funds.

The money being suggested really isn't sufficient if the goal is to have more college-educated New Mexicans who will stay in the state.  The money being suggested is being allocated poorly by focuses only on tuition instead of the full cost of attending an institution likely a good hundred miles or more from home.

However, in our era where any increased funding at all for Higher Education is a good thing, I do not believe that beggars can be choosers.

Yes, the governor is grossly exaggerating the impact of the additional proposed funding. If that's what it takes to shake loose the funding (versus getting no funding at all), I'll side with the governor.

Big Urban College practices this exact same sort of hyperbolic politicking to free up funding and resources. It is very effective. When I first was acquainted with the practice I was instinctively disgusted with the flagrant inaccuracies and exaggerations.

But we got our new resources by playing that game.

[polly_mer]

However, in our era where any increased funding at all for Higher Education is a good thing, I do not believe that beggars can be choosers.

Yes, the governor is grossly exaggerating the impact of the additional proposed funding. If that's what it takes to shake loose the funding (versus getting no funding at all), I'll side with the governor.

I'm seeing a theme today on opportunity cost.  New Mexico has had some very successful political campaigns recently that pointed out we're better off in most cases in prioritizing our needs and then allocating the money than taking the money with a ton of strings. The overhead for ensuring we're complying with the strings as well as the effect of letting someone else tell us what our priorities are because that's how the strings manifest themselves tends to divert resources for the ostensible needs being met as well as often not actually addressing the true needs we have.

This new funding comes from the general fund that is doing pretty well with current oil and gas prices.  As soon as the general fund dips down again, then this money is gone and we'll again be at "sorry, there's no money for that".  If we spent the money on roads and other infrastructure, like getting high-speed internet to the whole state so rural folks could have good distance education, then we'd at least have something for our money before the market dips again.  You can't take education away from people, but you can definitely waste their time by having them start a foundation that will never be completed.

The current governor was in office during the budgeting exercise in January.  Why wasn't education a higher priority then?  As an investment in the future of New Mexico, rejiggering the budget to establish a higher baseline for education and allowing other areas to be underfunded unless the general fund has a good year would be a better bet.

Michelle Lujan Grisham, like Steve Pearce, was a known quantity for New Mexico in the last governor's race.  No matter what, we were getting a governor who leaves people with a good memory wondering how much of any action is for the good of New Mexico based on what people actually want and proposals that can make progress on those goals and how much is mostly good for friends and relatives of the current crony in chief.  Nearly daily, I'm reminded that New Mexico is a poor, geographically large state with some regions still waiting for all the promises of the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 to come to fruition.

We don't need partial promises of college education for a few more people; we need to have infrastructure and good K-12 education that brings us all the way up to the year 2000 so we can be part of the modern world.  We can send people to college in neighboring states if push comes to shove; however, we're still so short on K-12 teachers in many districts that we go with the old model of anyone who has a GED, can pass a TB test, and doesn't come up as too criminal on the background check is allowed to be a long-term sub.

[Hibush]

...a governor who leaves people with a good memory wondering how much of any action is for the good of New Mexico based on what people actually want and proposals that can make progress on those goals and how much is mostly good for friends and relatives of the current crony in chief. 

New Mexico is hardly alone in this challenge. Our political system is not moving away from this model as far as I can tell.

For the intermediate term, it appears that higher-education leaders need to strive to make their institution a friend of the potential cronies-in-chief. That effort requires doing some purely pragmatic things in the service of principled goals.

In the long term it will be useful to make sure our students graduate with the knowledge of what one can expect from a high-functioning civil society and have some of the tools to engage with civil society to improve its function. It will be their responsibility to make that happen.