EDITORIAL: Setting Sights High: New Purdue President is One of Many Signs of Strength in State’s Higher Education.

By The News-Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Ind.

May 9–Has any university president ever arrived in Indiana to the kind of applause that greeted France Cordova, the new president of Purdue? From students on the West Lafayette campus to Gov. Mitch Daniels, Hoosiers have praised the new president, an internationally known astrophysicist who has been a university chancellor, a physics professor and NASA’s chief scientist.

What’s more important is that luring Cordova to Purdue isn’t just a fluke; it’s another sign of the strength of publicly supported higher education here. More students are continuing their education past high school. A greater percentage of the freshmen entering major state universities are graduating in four years. Indiana legislators show a strong commitment to higher education, providing a larger funding increase than for K-12 public schools.

In short, the old image of Indiana’s public universities as places where students study as a way to unwind between basketball or football games and drunken parties is being overturned. Students still love sports and parties, but those universities and their students are ever more serious about the work of learning, discovering, innovating and growing. And they’re getting strong support from the state.

Strong state support

As is always the case in the General Assembly, legislators were pulled in many directions by the competing requests or demands of interest groups. Above all, legislators felt compelled to reduce the bite of property taxes. But despite all that ferocious lobbying, higher education was able to make its case.

The state universities were given funding increases of 4.9 percent in the coming year and and 4.6 percent in the following year. That’s no windfall, but it is greater than the rate of inflation. It’s enough to provide schools with the funding for salary increases and also to hold down tuition increases for students.

So far, the public universities appear to be doing their part to hold down costs. Ball State University wants to increase its tuition 4.9 percent and raise some other fees, too. Purdue University wants to increase its tuition 4.5 percent each of the next two years. Again, that’s higher than inflation, but state schools remain bargains.

Purdue’s tuition, for example, would rise to $7,416 for students enrolled since last summer and to $7,750 in the 2008-2009 school year. In return for about $30,000 in classes and delaying the start of full-time work, a college graduate can earn an average of about $1 million more in a lifetime’s work than a person with only a high-school diploma, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

More committed students

Many high school graduates intend to make the most of educational opportunities. The Indiana Department of Education reports that in the 2004-2005 school year, 82 percent of graduating seniors intended to continue their education. Sixty-two percent of the graduates intended to enroll in four-year degree programs. (Allen County’s percentages are quite a bit higher than the state average. Here, 91 percent intended to continue education, with 73 percent headed for four-year degree programs.)

The problem is, too few students in state schools actually stick with college and earn degrees in four years. But improving four-year graduation rates show how the picture is changing. Ball State University has placed special emphasis on getting more students to graduate in four years. As the Star Press of Muncie reported this week, the school is having some success.

Thirty-four percent of Ball State students graduate in four years, up from only 20 percent six years ago. The rates are higher, but the improvements less dramatic, at Purdue and IU. At Purdue, four-year graduation has increased from 33 percent to 40 percent in the last six years. At IU, the rate rose from 46 to 51 percent in six years.

At the same time, enrollment and class loads are generally increasing at state schools, too. At IPFW last fall, a record 7,044 full-time students enrolled. Although the total number of students fell about 1 percent, the total number of credit hours increased to 122,818.

IU’s Bloomington campus also reported a record freshman class last year — 7,259 freshmen out of a total enrollment of 38,247.

Obviously, numbers and statistics can’t tell the whole story. There’s more to college than economic benefits, and a commitment to higher education means more than appropriating more money. College isn’t the only route to financial success, let alone happiness. But for most people who want to earn solid, middle-class wages, higher education is becoming almost indispensible.

As Indiana’s expectations for its young people and its universities rise, Cordova is an apt choice to lead one of the state’s premier research universities. She’s lived much of her career setting her sights high, studying stars and probing the nature of the cosmos.

She comes at a price — $501,000 in her first year, plus use of the Purdue president’s residence and a car, according to the university. Then again, there’s a steep price for Indiana’s strengthening commitment to higher education and young Hoosiers’ willingness to put off work and to enroll in universities for long-term rewards. The price is worth it.

By Bob Caylor for the editorial board

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Copyright (c) 2007, The News-Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Ind.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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