Nancy Cassis, a Republican from Novi, tried to get her fellow senators to fund the program at a much-reduced level. Liz Brater, an Ann Arbor Democrat, said to eliminate the promise grant was more than just breaking a sacred promise to Michigan’s college students.
It is also a move designed to sabotage our state’s future economy. But Tony Stamas of Midland, the chair of the appropriations committee wasn’t sympathetic. He said “we don’t have the dollars,” which, in a sense is true. The state is running an enormous budget deficit, and painful cuts have to be made.
But then, according to the respected Gongwer News Service, Stamas added that the state also has a promise to keep prisoners behind bars. Well, nobody has been suggesting turning our serial killers loose to roam the streets. But I am struck by his choice of priorities. For years, it’s been clear that a big part of our economic problem in Michigan has been an insufficiently educated work force.
We have a smaller percentage of young adults with college degrees than our surrounding states, the ones that compete most heavily with us for jobs. There’s no great mystery as to why this is so.
For many years, you could come out of high school and get a good-paying job slapping fenders on cars or bending metal on an assembly line. Those jobs have vanished now, and aren’t coming back. Michigan needs to transition from a brawn-based to a brain-based economy, as fast as possible. The Michigan Promise Grant is designed to help do that, by providing scholarships worth up to $4,000 to college-bound kids graduating from Michigan high schools.
Lt. Gov. John Cherry knows how short-sighted eliminating the grant is. Five years ago, when times were still relatively good, he chaired a special commission that looked at higher education in the state. Its members concluded that we needed to start by doubling the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded within a decade. We are now running far behind that pace, and zeroing out the promise grant will set us back even further. “It’s so basic to your state’s future,” the lieutenant governor said yesterday. Ninety-six thousand students were depending on promise grant funding this fall.
The lieutenant governor argued that eliminating the promise grant would be like a farmer eating his seed corn.
But he failed by a single vote to sway the Republican-controlled senate. The senators also cut funding for other need-based programs, including competitive scholarships and tuition grants. They slashed money for nursing students at a time when Michigan has a dramatic shortage of nurses and has to import them from Canada.
Now, what the senate did isn’t the final word. The Democrats control the House, and some of this money may yet be restored.
But the senate’s action is profoundly dismaying. Our elected leaders are supposed to try to give us a better future.
And sadly, this bunch just isn’t there yet.
Anyone who does not attend college because the Michigan Promise Scholarship is not available probably isn't very committed to obtaining an education anyway. After all, we're only talking about a token amount as a reward for a substantial investment already made. I put 2 children through college some years ago, and even then the amount of this scholarship would not have been enough to influence a decision.
Besides, what other state program are you going to decimate in order to keep this one? None of us wants our pet projects touched - cut spending, just don't inconvenience me personally.
Posted by: Nancy Hoskins | June 24, 2009 at 04:47 PM
The symbolism of our state cutting a scholarship fund I guess does not play well in the minds of some people who look to phony symbols as a measure of substance..
I will run for the water cooler and call my elite friends when I here that the State of Michigan has decided to pull out of the union...Now that is news in a recession era ...
Posted by: Thrasher | June 24, 2009 at 05:58 PM
As the father of a newly graduated high school senior and soon to graduate college senior, I can say that this cut does hit me. But as I look over and consider college & career options with my son and daughter, I am struck by several observations.
Michigan's public universities are very expensive relative to many other state's universities. In many states, out of state tuition is higher than Michigan's in state tuition. Why is this and what are we getting for our investment verses other states?
Secondly, what benefit do Michigan's tax payers receive from their investment in state universities and financial/tuition aid as so many of our graduates leave Michigan for better job markets? We need a mechanism that rewards our graduates (and why not even other states's graduates?) for staying, bringing their training here and yes even paying taxes here. Just throwing more money into our bloated, out of touch universities as we have in the past is nuts!
Posted by: Matt | June 25, 2009 at 11:51 AM
I don't know if I like the idea of tax dollars going to high school students . . . . the cost of a higher education is insane, but if the child is committed to going to school, he or she will work, live frugally, take out some loans, and find ways to pay for it, just as other generations of students did. We act like if a parent can't afford college, then the child will be doomed. I put myself through college at 26 -- it was had but obviously not impossible.
Posted by: Emily | June 27, 2009 at 07:23 PM