The Maintenance of Effort amendment to the Higher Education Act, which holds state governments accountable for reducing funds to public colleges and universities, passed in Congress Wednesday.
According to Cal State Long Beach President F. King Alexander, the U.S. Senate passed the amendment by one vote, and was opposed by a majority of state governors and private university representatives.
Alexander was one of the representatives for the 450 public universities at conferences in Washington D.C. last week. In regards to the opposition he said via e-mail, “We’re in a fight with Senator Lamar Alexander from Tennessee and some of his friends in conference discussions … The National Governors Association hates [the amendment]. The state council and governments hates it.”
The amendment was passed in March by the U.S. House of Representatives, and according to Alexander, the Maintenance of Effort amendment may cause tuition costs to fall because in order to keep the state governments from reducing education funding, the amendment would withhold federal Leveraging Educational Assistance Partnership funds from states until they raise education funding to a certain level.
“What the Secretary of Education would do is withhold those funds from states until they do provide adequate funding.” Alexander said According to Alexander, the amendment would give state governments an incentive to maintain adequate support for public universities.
“When the federal government puts more money into the system, it needs to go on top of what the states do, not to substitute for what the states do,” Alexander said. For example, in the past the federal Pell grant funds replaced state funds that were cut.
California remains among the most affordable states in the country for higher education, but in the current economic crisis, the CSU’s funding system is threatened to be cut.
“We are a state-supported higher education system and we have more to lose than many other states if our state refuses to finance public higher education, like it has done in the past,” Alexander said.”We’re not a tuition and fee-reliant system.”
The amendment, Alexander says, is especially important in a budget crisis. “Now, when the budget gets cut, [student] fees go up … What [the amendment] does is it forces states to not reduce [funding] so much … to really think carefully before they reduce their budgets,” Alexander said.
“Therefore, tuition and fees will only go up marginally. So the ultimate winner … is students in this environment.”
Public university representatives received bipartisan support from Reps. George Miller, D-Calif., chair of the reauthorization, Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., and Sen. Edward Kennedy’s staff member, J.D. LaRock. According to an e-mail from a House staff member sent to Alexander, the National Governor’s Association urged a “no-vote” to the amendment, saying that, “While we can agree to disagree, we know full well that Senator Alexander has not made some more antiquated arguments against the MoE provision that F. King Alexander attributes to him. I find it to be unfortunate that you would lift your organization’s credence to such a statement.”
But Alexander greatly opposes Sen. Alexander for several reasons. “[Lamar] Alexander has been wrong on public education from day one,” F. King Alexander said. “He tried to wipe out the Department of Education [and] the secretary of education … he’s telling everyone on the hill that because he was a college president [of the University of Tennessee], then he knows what’s really good for public higher education. Well, we’re up there representing 450 public universities to say that he’s wrong on it.”
