School Leader Seeks Way to Pay for Plan

By MORGAN JOSEY

If only college degrees grew on trees.

Because they don’t, Guilford County Schools Superintendent Terry Grier must find a way to pay for a proposal to provide graduating high school students up to two years of free college courses at GTCC. So far, the possible sources are county taxpayers and local businesses.

“I think it’s an audacious idea,” Grier said about the proposal. “I think the real key comes down to how do you pay for it.”

Grier thinks expanding the number of students with access to college degrees could improve Guilford County’s work force. He is not the first to want to offer free tuition to students.

School districts and colleges in Michigan, Colorado, Tennessee and Wisconsin are providing or considering covering students’ tuition. Former N.C. Lt. Gov. Dennis Wicker unsuccessfully floated a plan in 1998 to give high school seniors free tuition if they enrolled in a community college full time directly after high school.

The Guilford Education Alliance wants to join with the district to develop a model, Director Margaret Arbuckle said. The Board of Education also unanimously approved Saturday formal discussions about the plan between Grier and other government leaders. School board members want to know from Grier what students the program would target and whether to limit participating schools to GTCC.

“If we’re trying to get people behind it, we have to find a way to unite the whole community,” board member Garth Hebert said Saturday.

Grier chose GTCC because it would cost the school system less than a four–year college and the credits there are transferable, he said.

Rough estimates by the district place the cost of the program between $9.6 million over two years for only low–income graduates to $21.3 million over two years for this year’s 4,560 seniors, based on the cost of tuition, fees, books and supplies.

Grier’s idea has drawn support from a few local leaders, including Guilford County Commissioner Carolyn Coleman and Hoyt Phillips, president of the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce.

Coleman, who spoke to Grier about his idea last year, thinks the county could have a role in paying for the program, but said possible school construction, jail and social service bonds could crowd out funding for a tuition plan this year, she said.

“I think it’s a wonderful idea, and it will encourage more of our young people to pursue a vocational trade or college,” Coleman said.

Phillips said the Greensboro business community has actively supported education initiatives for the past decade.

“We know we have got to have an educated work force for today and the future,” Phillips said.

The tuition program could boost the reputation of the district, Grier said, and indirectly improve student attendance, discipline and graduation rates at high schools because students will want to receive free tuition.

GTCC President Don Cameron supports the proposal. Fifteen percent of last year’s 4,200 Guilford County Schools graduates enrolled the next semester at GTCC. Cameron said he could see that increasing to about 30 percent.

GTCC could accommodate an influx of students because of new classroom buildings being added to campuses in Jamestown, High Point and Greensboro, Cameron said.

The college also has participated in tuition assistance programs in the past. It currently waives tuition for qualifying students in a technical field, such as automotive and computer technology.

Aaron Robinson, a participant in GTCC’s scholarship program, said he likes Grier’s idea.

“I think it would be great,” said Robinson, a former Western High School student studying computer programming. “At the same time, you have to have some regulations with that. If people get in and don’t take it seriously then it’s just an extension of high school.”

The district could face challenges maintaining long–term financial support from businesses and keeping some students from seeing the program as an entitlement, rather than an incentive to go to college, said Terry Stoops, an education analyst with the John Locke Foundation, a public policy think tank in Raleigh.

“I think the assumption being used here is that students need to go to college to be successful and that is simply not the case,” Stoops said.

High Point Mayor Becky Smothers said the number of Guilford County high school graduates taking remedial courses at GTCC concerns her.

Three out of five GTCC students take remedial courses, Cameron said, with a small portion of those students graduating from high school the year before enrolling in the college.

“I fully support it but only if they (students) are ready to do college–level courses,” Smothers said. “Until we are able to produce youngsters that are work and college ready, I don’t see spending more money to get what they should already have.”

Grier said only students who meet GTCC’s entrance requirements could qualify for the program, and only after they have exhausted other scholarship opportunities.

Contact Morgan Josey at 373–7078 or mjosey@news–record.com

(c) 2007 Greensboro News Record. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.