{"id":31571,"date":"2019-06-06T20:27:39","date_gmt":"2019-06-07T01:27:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=31571"},"modified":"2019-06-13T15:37:05","modified_gmt":"2019-06-13T20:37:05","slug":"oklahomas-higher-education-cuts-have-hit-harder-at-regional-universities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2019\/06\/06\/oklahomas-higher-education-cuts-have-hit-harder-at-regional-universities\/","title":{"rendered":"Oklahoma\u2019s higher education cuts have hit harder at regional universities"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oklahoma has slashed funding for higher education by <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.okhighered.org\/leg-info\/2018\/legislative-agenda.shtml\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">over 25 percent since 2008<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. In response, each public university has raised tuition, but the cuts have had a disproportionate effect on the state\u2019s 11 regional institutions and the students they serve.<\/span><\/p><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/632940990&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=false\" width=\"100%\" height=\"150\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, the cost of a bachelor\u2019s degree has gone up significantly in the last decade. The school has raised tuition and fees by 75 percent since 2008. At the same time, real household incomes have actually decreased in much of the NSU\u2019s service area according to an <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.census.gov\/library\/visualizations\/2018\/comm\/saipe-income-increases.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">analysis from the U.S. Census Bureau<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWith the disinvestment by the state, we&#8217;ve had to cover some of those costs with other revenue, and we\u2019ve had to cut expenses significantly. We want to remain affordable but also have to meet the bottom line,\u201d explained Dr. Steve Turner, who has served as NSU\u2019s president since 2012. <\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI think anytime you have a tuition increase it is an impediment for someone, and we do serve a lot of students that are quite poor,\u201d Turner said. <\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While NSU\u2019s administration slowed hiring and reduced class offerings, students tried to ease the burden of paying for school in other ways. In 2014 they started a food pantry that has since expanded into Rowdy\u2019s Resource Room. It\u2019s a place where any student can get free food, clothing, toiletries, school supplies and more. <\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cA lot of students struggle to pay for everything,\u201d said Michael Payne, who oversees Rowdy\u2019s Resource Room. \u201cThe Resource Room allows that spending that students were going to be doing on food to go to other things, most likely their tuition.\u201d<\/span><\/p><p><b>The Most \u2018Vulnerable\u2019 Institutions<\/b><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dr. Turner believes the cuts to state funding have had a unique impact on regional universities like NSU because, unlike the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University, they don\u2019t have large endowments to fall back on. <\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dr. Sandy Baum, a higher education researcher at the Urban Institute in Washington D.C., agrees. <\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt&#8217;s true that those institutions are more vulnerable,\u201d Baum said. \u201cOne piece of it is endowments, but also the flagship universities are much more likely to have the possibility of attracting students from out of state or international students who pay higher tuition. That can compensate to some extent for the loss of state funding.\u201d<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Baum also says regional universities tend to serve more \u201cat-risk\u201d students, who are more likely to fail or dropout. One of the factors that determines the likelihood of graduation is income. <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.edweek.org\/edweek\/high_school_and_beyond\/COE-18-Pell-Indicators-f.pdf\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Low-income students graduate at lower rates<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. <\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nearly half of Oklahoma\u2019s university students attend regional institutions. Data from the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education shows that compared to those attending OU and OSU, regional university students are far more likely to receive need-based financial aid, and they graduate at much lower rates. In 2018 the average six-year graduation rate for regional universities was 28 percent lower than the flagship universities. That graduation gap has persisted for the last ten years.<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_31572\"  class=\"wp-caption module image aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 672px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-31572\" src=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2019\/06\/need-based-aid-graph-672x415.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"672\" height=\"415\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2019\/06\/need-based-aid-graph-672x415.png 672w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2019\/06\/need-based-aid-graph.png 1920w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2019\/06\/need-based-aid-graph-768x475.png 768w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2019\/06\/need-based-aid-graph-150x93.png 150w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2019\/06\/need-based-aid-graph-300x185.png 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2019\/06\/need-based-aid-graph-620x383.png 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2019\/06\/need-based-aid-graph-1747x1080.png 1747w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 672px) 100vw, 672px\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Data from the Oklahoma State Board of Regents show about 27 percent of students at research universities receive need-based financial aid versus over 44 percent at regional universities as of May 2019.<\/p>\n<\/div><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Regional university students have also faced the steepest tuition hikes over time. Tuition at those schools has increased by an average of 86 percent since 2008, compared to about 63 percent at OU and OSU. <\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_31573\"  class=\"wp-caption module image aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 672px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-31573\" src=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2019\/06\/tuition-and-fees-graph-672x424.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"672\" height=\"424\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2019\/06\/tuition-and-fees-graph-672x424.png 672w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2019\/06\/tuition-and-fees-graph.png 1920w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2019\/06\/tuition-and-fees-graph-768x484.png 768w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2019\/06\/tuition-and-fees-graph-150x95.png 150w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2019\/06\/tuition-and-fees-graph-300x189.png 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2019\/06\/tuition-and-fees-graph-620x391.png 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2019\/06\/tuition-and-fees-graph-1714x1080.png 1714w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 672px) 100vw, 672px\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Data from the Oklahoma University of Regents show that while regional universities remain less expensive than research universities, tuition and fees at regional universities have increased at a higher average rate over the last decade.<\/p>\n<\/div><p><b>Reinvesting in Higher Education<\/b><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are good reasons for states to spend on higher education. Research shows people with bachelor\u2019s degrees earn far more on average than those with just a high school diploma, and the future economy demands and more highly-educated workforce. In Oklahoma specifically, it is predicted that <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/oklahomaworks.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/2017-Oklahoma-Educational-Attainment-Study-Print-and-Release.pdf\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">up to 70 percent of jobs<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> will require education beyond high school by 2025.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As college costs have risen nationwide following the Great Recession, Baum believes policy discussions have focused too narrowly on price, especially when it comes to low-income students. <\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe do know that at lower prices more low income students are going to enroll in college,\u201d Baum said. The question of whether they\u2019ll graduate is less clear. <\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThere is a lot of evidence that just giving people a thousand dollars off the price can have much less impact on their success, particularly for low-income students, than giving the money to the institution to provide them with better support services to succeed academically, to graduate and then to get a good job.\u201d<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Baum referenced <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/scholar.harvard.edu\/files\/ddeming\/files\/DW_Aug2017.pdf\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a 2017 paper<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> by Dr. David J. Deming of Harvard University and UC Berkeley\u2019s Christopher R. Walters. The two researchers found that each additional dollar given to post-secondary institutions had a greater positive effect on degree attainment than price cuts. <\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oklahoma lawmakers increased higher education funding this year by $28 million or roughly 3 percent&#8211; the largest appropriation increase in ten years&#8211;but that money is restricted to faculty salaries and research, so it cannot be used for support services. To put that figure in perspective, Northeastern State University alone receives $13 million less annually than it did a decade ago.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oklahoma has slashed funding for higher education by over 25 percent since 2008. In response, each public university has raised tuition, but the cuts have had a disproportionate effect on the state\u2019s 11 regional institutions and the students they serve.\ufeffAt Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, the cost of a bachelor\u2019s degree has gone up significantly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":205,"featured_media":31584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[1094,1091,272,1090,1089,1093,1092],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31571"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/205"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31571"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31608,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31571\/revisions\/31608"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}