How Bill Owens screwed higher education in Colorado
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| Also listed in: Statewide Student Progress |
All laid out indisputably in the Rocky Mountain News.
College voucher program under fire
Four years later,
For those of you new to education funding issues in Colorado, COF seems to have been one of the latter brainchilds in the GOP-held Colorado legislature of the far right's strategy to destroy public higher education (funding being one angle, the other side of the strategy being to attack higher education on ideological grounds, a well-chronicled saga available by searching this blog for the keyword "David Horowitz.")
Ostensibly, they wanted to create a "competitive" environment for students at the schools' expense by stripping colleges of much of their funding and "assigning" it to individual students. In practice, however, the original per-student numbers the Republicans promised were immediately nearly halved, religious schools are now suing to be included in the program (many say with a deliberate opening given them by then-Governor Owens), and the College Opportunity Fund has emerged as a disaster for Colorado students and colleges alike.
At best, COF is just another chokehold on proper support for our state's most valuable institutions, like TABOR which the Republicans champion while trying to ham-fistedly circumvent with shell games like like the College Opportunity Fund, like the Baptist preacher trying to come up with an abili for visiting a whorehouse. When their nutty plans are shown to have failed, it has to be how the plan was "received," not that the plan was fundamentally misguided and destined to fail.
But like I said before, the most sinister possibility is that they knew it would fail all along...
So yes, absolutely, ditch COF, but don't forget who you have to thank for it.
College voucher program under fire
In 2004, Colorado took a bold, new approach to funding higher education. Rather than state money going directly to public colleges and universities, most would be put in vouchers that students could use for tuition...
Four years later,
Since COF went into place, the low-income college student population statewide has dropped, a trend that runs contrary to a key goal of the program.
Schools say COF is too complicated. While most eligible students get the stipend, more than 3,000 this year didn't apply and needlessly paid up to $2,600 more for their education or defaulted on their bills.
"The bottom line is that COF was a noble goal that met reality," said Tony Kinkel, president of Pikes Peak Community College in Colorado Springs. "It's time to get rid of it."
David Skaggs, a former Democratic congressman and now executive director of the state Department of Higher Education, said he's received only complaints about the funding system.
"There's a consistent theme . . . all in the 'We avoided TABOR but other than that this isn't worth it category.' "
For those of you new to education funding issues in Colorado, COF seems to have been one of the latter brainchilds in the GOP-held Colorado legislature of the far right's strategy to destroy public higher education (funding being one angle, the other side of the strategy being to attack higher education on ideological grounds, a well-chronicled saga available by searching this blog for the keyword "David Horowitz.")
Ostensibly, they wanted to create a "competitive" environment for students at the schools' expense by stripping colleges of much of their funding and "assigning" it to individual students. In practice, however, the original per-student numbers the Republicans promised were immediately nearly halved, religious schools are now suing to be included in the program (many say with a deliberate opening given them by then-Governor Owens), and the College Opportunity Fund has emerged as a disaster for Colorado students and colleges alike.
At best, COF is just another chokehold on proper support for our state's most valuable institutions, like TABOR which the Republicans champion while trying to ham-fistedly circumvent with shell games like like the College Opportunity Fund, like the Baptist preacher trying to come up with an abili for visiting a whorehouse. When their nutty plans are shown to have failed, it has to be how the plan was "received," not that the plan was fundamentally misguided and destined to fail.
But like I said before, the most sinister possibility is that they knew it would fail all along...
So yes, absolutely, ditch COF, but don't forget who you have to thank for it.
