Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Paying For College 

Here’s Tony. He’s worked at Barron’s Supermarket in El Paso for twenty years. He’s proud—and happy. Along with Robert and Gloria, the owners at Barron’s, he just finished putting all his kids through college. Now, they are using the income that used to go to tuition to build a bakery right next door.

For too many Texans, college is a distant dream.

In Texas today, 26 percent of the population aged 25 to 65 has a bachelor’s degree or higher.  In Canada, by comparison, 41 percent of the working age population has either a college or university education.  Unless we do better, for the first time in history, Texans of tomorrow will be less prosperous than Texans today. 

A college degree means money. A Texan with a college degree will earn $2.9 million over her lifetime, whereas one with a high school degree will earn only $1.7 million. And for high school dropouts, they will earn only $1.1 million.

In today’s knowledge world, what we earn depends on what we learn. Just to keep up with our peer states—California, Illinois, Michigan and New York—Texas must graduate 630,000 more students from four year colleges.  That would put Texas at a 5.7 percent college participation rate by 2015.  Today, the national average is 5.4 percent, while only 5 percent of Texas students continue to college.  If we don’t make these investments, Steve Murdoch, our state’s demographer states bluntly what will happen: family income will drop $6000 on average by 2040.

In Georgia, almost 15 years ago, Governor Zell Miller made good on a promise to pay for college for any student with a B or better. But in Texas, total academic charges have risen by 40 percent since tuition deregulation in 2003, without the grants to pay for it. Even after a session where we had a $14 billion surplus, the TEXAS Grant program is $380 million short of paying for the estimated demand in 2009.

And now, we find out that college loans to help pay tuition have been rigged to benefit loan officers not the students.  In one case, a university took $3 million from a lender then took the low cost competitor off the school’s preferred lender list.

More of us need to talk about education. And state policies need to keep up with progress. In 2003, state leaders cut the inheritance tax on millionaires that would have put $117 million in the state treasury that year alone.  Then, since 2004, designated tuition paid by Texas families has been hiked from $51 million to $318 million by the 2006 school year, essentially balancing the tax cuts to millionaires on the backs of Texas’ college students. 

Further, 70 percent of enrollment growth in Texas higher education happens in Community Colleges.  Yet, on June 15, Governor Rick Perry vetoed $153 million in the budget for community group health insurance costs.  Now, that cost will be paid by local taxpayers in higher taxes or students in more tuition.  That’s the wrong direction for Texas.

If America can put a man on the moon, Texas can put students through college. All it takes is leadership. 

Eliot Shapleigh 

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