Young Invincibles: Wrong Solution on Loans:

If our leaders in Washington fail to act again, over 7 million students would see their interest rates jump from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent on July 1.  That adds $1,000 to repayment per year of school for someone who borrows the maximum amount each year – an extra $4,000 for a student who graduates in 4 years. Students are fed up with manufactured crises and Band-Aid policies. We need a comprehensive solution that permanently fixes how the federal government sets interest rates for student loans.  But the current long-term proposals fall far short.

Aaron Smith, is spot on. By cutting key investments our public systems of higher education around the country, lawmakers have more or less decided that the money students borrow will be one of the primary funding mechanisms that fund our colleges. The true long term consequences of this alarming trend have yet to be fully realized, so the LEAST federal lawmakers should do is limit the risk these loans have on our future. So many students have problems with student debt that it isn’t simply a personal problem to be addressed by individuals—it’s a structural problem with the loan system and the process. Aaron is right—lawmakers need to clean up the mess they’ve helped cause before it becomes even more of a mess.

Matt Talhelm reporting for NBC29 covered our event! Video below:

And Andrew D’Amato from the Cavalier Daily wrote:

Third-year College student Brendan Wynn, president of the group, said he hoped the event would encourage students to take an active role in advocating for their education. “We learned from what happened last summer that the students have a voice,” he said. “We have a real opportunity to make a big difference in what happens at the University.”

The event was part of the organization’s larger efforts to inform young Virginia voters about the political debates and policies which directly affect their life. Following that trend, panelists discussed everything from state funding for education to faculty retention.

We’re waiting on a couple more pieces to surface but we’ll update this as we learn more!

By Peter Martin.

Virginia21’s Higher Education Panel drew a large crowd of students to discuss important issues facing the future of Virginia yesterday afternoon. With an all-star line up of esteemed college faculty and legislators, the panel spoke frankly about the fate of colleges if their financial books do not improve.

The event, planned the VA21 chapter at the University of Virginia, touched on a number of issues from college affordability, UVA value for money, the role of community colleges, and threats to faculty salaries and research opportunities.

Key highlights from the panel include:

• President Sullivan’s frank warning that by 2020 the University of Virginia will receive no state funding at all should present trends continue.
• President Friedman of Piedmont Virginia Community College said that with only tuition and state dollars as sources of revenue, the community college system will struggle to teach all demographics in the future without better support.
• Delegate Landes said that Virginia’s salary problem isn’t just at college, it’s at K–12 too. If Virginia’s future is going to be competitive Virginia needs to think up new solutions to the issues affecting education.
• Finally, Delegate Toscano emphasized that government’s role in higher education determines the quality, affordability, and future competitiveness of Virginia’s graduates. Without prioritizing investments into higher education, Virginia will fall behind.

If you want to get involved with more Virginia21 events at UVA and across Virginia’s colleges, or to follow Delegate Landes’ advice and tell legislators what needs doing, follow us on our Facebook page and our Twitter to hear about upcoming events.

Local media also covered our event and we should have more photos to come on our Facebook page!

The Virginian-Pilot
April 9th, 2013
By Julian Walker

Like hungry dogs with bones, Virginia Democrats and Republicans have latched onto issues they consider harmful to Ken Cuccinelli and Terry McAuliffe, respectively, and neither side seems ready to unclench their jaws.

Democrats’ focus is on conflict of interest questions orbiting Cuccinelli over his connections to Star Scientific Inc. — the Henrico County company in which Cuccinelli is a shareholder has sued the state over a six-figure disputed tax bill.

Although Cuccinelli recently recused the Attorney General’s Office after his financial stake in the company, as well as his ties to the company’s chief executive, were revealed, Democrats still say he should resign from office as he runs for governor.

For the full article click here.

By Peter Martin

IJ Chan’s graph in JMU’s The Breeze (nearly) tells all:

At Friday’s Board of Visitors meeting, Provost Jerry Benson and senior vice president of administration and finance Charles King both made presentations on differential tuition and 2013–2014 tuition, respectively.

According to King, the proposed tuition and fees for in-state students in the 2013–2014 academic year is $9,176, a $368 increase from this year’s $8,808. Out-of-state students will pay $23,654; an $858 increase from 2012–2013’s tuition at $22,796. Both room and board and tuition have been on the rise for at least the past four years.

King also mentioned there were several financial issues that JMU needs to address in the coming year, including the rising cost of medical insurance, enrollment growth, the new construction and renovation of academic buildings and faculty and staff compensation.

King forgets another issue: Richmond isn’t funding the students like they used to. Go back ten or twenty years and you see that JMU students like now-Senator McDougle (’93) received significantly more funding than JMU students today.

That’s what the graph doesn’t show: that while tuition has skyrocketed and Richmond’s support for college students has trickled up since 2008, enrollment has to keep on going up to draw in more dollars.

Here’s the real picture at JMU: (fix graph title, $ on left)

I’m not sure whether Student Body President Matt Klein was right to blame philantrophy – it’s Richmond that’s failed JMU, not the alma matter – but he’s spot on with the consequences of these tuition increases. Without them, JMU will be losing professors to better funded colleges:

“No one’s happy about tuition raises, but I think they also understand that these programs are very prestigious programs,” Klein said. “We’re not getting the philanthropy that we need from our alumni and the only other way to maintain and evolve the education that we’ve learned to love at the university, we’re going to have to sacrifice having a low tuition.”

An expensive, quality degree is better than a cheap degree, especially when Richmond won’t get their priorities straight.

By Tom Kramer

Jenna Johnson at the Washington Post says that the proposed tuition increased at UVa. have split the Board of Visitors:

A string of administrators told members of the U-Va. Board of Visitors that more money is needed to keep up with costs mandated by the state, such as retirement benefits and salary increases, and to improve the quality of an undergraduate education. One idea the administration has proposed is to charge third- and fourth-year students an annual $2,000 “Academic Excellence Fee” to cover the higher cost of smaller classes, personalized advising and other perks.

This isn’t really surprising; the cost of running a college keeps going up (in large part because of the state) and either tuition or state funding has to offset those costs. With state funding for Virginia’s public colleges still below 2008 levels, it’s understandable that UVa. has to take this approach to covering their costs.

Here’s what I know: President Sullivan’s plan has 2 main advantages: It helps UVa. keep and attract great college faculty to continue providing a world class education, and it gives students and their families some cost consistency for 4 years. The key to a great education is a great teacher, and how do you expect them to stick around if they haven’t received raises in 5 years? Also, one big key to affordability is cost consistency–this plan gets high marks for that too!

One thing that’s noticeably missing from this story and the dialogue are thoughts from students. Here’s what Olivia Beavers, a second year and one of our Virginia21 members, had to say:

“I don’t favor the year-to-year increases in tuition and fees, but I would never compromise the quality of my education at the University of Virginia. Being in a 20 person class, I recognize the benefits of small classes; if a $2,000 fee continues to allow this type of education, I will make the sacrifice.”

We’ll be researching more student opinions on this as the debate continues. UVa. just may be at the forefront in crisis facing higher education all across the country.

As universities raise alarms about the potentially devastating effects of more than $1-billion in looming cuts in federal research spending, a leading credit-rating agency issued a report on Thursday that seemed to say: “Calm down. This will sting for just a moment.”

The vast majority of American universities and nonprofit organizations will “face only minimal effects” from the budget cuts in the 2013 fiscal year, according to the report by Moody’s Investors Service. Just 1 percent of institutions—”primarily stand-alone research institutes”—are at risk of losing more than 3 percent of revenue during the first year of the across-the-board budget cuts known as sequestration.

Moody’s issued a grim report in January on the general outlook for higher education, but Thursday’s report—part of a series about the effect of sequestration—was optimistic, if measured.

John Nelson, managing director of the health-care and higher-education rating teams at Moody’s, acknowledged that the new report may come as cold comfort for worried federal-grant administrators at research universities.

“There are a lot of careers on the line, a lot of disappointed young researchers and older researchers who were used to certain success rates on their grants,” he said. But “we don’t read this as any kind of major loss of faith in research universities. It’s more a function of the difficult choices that government faces.”

Moody’s assesses the risk of lending money, Mr. Nelson said, and universities remain a solid investment.

“We don’t make any statement about whether the government policy on funding is a good idea,” he said. “We’re just saying that universities have a lot of adaptive abilities, and from the perspective of ‘Are bondholders going to get their money back?,’ this is not a serious threat to them.”

For the full article click here.

Virginia21 held their 3rd Student Leadership Committee meeting this year to discuss the upcoming political races, Bill Bolling’s decision not to run, and issues affecting higher education. Braving the snow, chapter presidents from each of Virginia’s colleges met in the Capitol on Sunday to discuss the past legislative session and put forward their plans for the remainder of the Spring semester.

Campus chapters from each of Virginia’s colleges are planning events to have students meet with legislatures, faculty and college administrators to discuss the state of higher education in Virginia. Critically, students are concerned about the value of their education with the looming threat of potential faculty losses.

In Charlottesville, chapters are the University of Virginia and Piedmont Virginia Community College are cooperating to hold a discussion panel on higher education policies with anticipated speakers to include Steven Landes, David Toscano, and other senior figures. The event is expected to have over 100 students speaking with politicians and offers a rare opportunity for policy makers to learn from students what affects them most. At Longwood University, Virginia21 is teaming up with active political organizations to hold a debate on the role of government and global issues.

The SLC was also surprised with a special visit from Brian Cannon, one of the founders of Virginia21, who talked about the need for sensible advocacy campaigns that gives credibility to the message that they convey. Finally, the SLC was given a teaser of the upcoming statewide projects by Virginia21 that are set to affect the upcoming gubernatorial election. While nothing can be made public just yet, Virginia21 hopes to have more statewide campaigns and events this year than in any previous year.

To find out more about upcoming Virginia21 events, campus activities across the state, and student leadership committee meetings, visit us at Facebook.

According to a recent article in The Chronicle, a state senator in California has sponsored a bill that would establish “a statewide platform through which students who have trouble getting into certain low-level, high-demand classes could take approved online courses offered by providers outside the state’s higher-education system.”

The Chronicle of Higher Education
By Kelly Field
March 12, 2013