Last week, the House Education
Committee vetted several bills relating to the program, which pays for tuition
at state colleges or universities or its equivalent at private schools and in
some instances a little more. While they varied in approach, all had the effect
of reducing its cost to the state, which is forecast to hit
the $370 million annual level within a few years.
In the process of taking
testimony, the committee heard from James Caillier, representing the Patrick
Taylor Foundation. Taylor initiated the program privately over two decades ago,
promising a group of students disproportionately from low income families that
if they did sufficiently well in their studies, he would foot their college tuition
costs. Caillier, responding to the plethora of bills that raised qualification
standards and/or would have winners take on the initial costs of their
education, decried the bills with “What are they trying to do? Make it a
program for the rich?”
And there’s the confusion, both
on the part of its speaker and the program, writ large. When it began, the state
did not place any means test on receiving an award but used language
indicating these were to be awarded on the basis of merit. Except that the
merit standards utilized lacked any real merit to them. Today, all
one must do to qualify at the baccalaureate level if from a Louisiana high
school is to exceed slightly the admission standards to the state’s lowest tier
(“regional”) universities (and when TOPS began, when these schools basically
had no admission standards, all that was required on the American College Test
was a score of 19, that with 8 as the minimum and 36 as the maximum meant a
score over two-thirds of all takers met or surpassed), and to qualify for
two-year colleges’ tuition a student can have significantly lower standardized
test scores and some fewer core class credits.
In other words, such low
standards made this more of an entitlement than a true scholarship award. But
to launch a program that then would cost tens of millions of dollars a year
that would have been designed only to pay tuition of low-income students was
impossible politically. Rightfully so, families whose children met these
standards but who would have to pay tuition even though they had made the
decisions and done the things to put their families in position to acquire
greater wealth would have felt cheated at being penalized for their success. So
policy-makers created an entitlement disguised as a scholarship program.
Some have chafed at this ever
since, whose proposals to reform TOPS would entail placing income limits to
make this a means-tested welfare program. Caillier’s remark has its genesis with
this sentiment, but also includes the odious idea that income predetermines academic
success. It fails to understand that income and academic success at best are
indirectly related, because both are directly related to cultural
attitudes as first identified by Edward Banfield. Simply, people with an
orientation to present consumption were far more likely to be poor than those
oriented towards future goals, because the latter delayed immediate gratification
in favor of pursuing behaviors (including working for academic success) that
would secure higher incomes. Generally but not always, the poor don’t succeed academically
not because they lack resources, but because the same set of attitudes that
caused their lack of resources also discourages their academic attainment.
By raising TOPS standards, this
finally makes it more into a genuine scholarship program that should become much
more efficient in its use of funds, being as many as half of those who qualify
and use it eventually lose it and these disproportionately are qualifiers closer
to the standards’ cutoff point. But this would have it lose the entitlement
status that makes it another bauble politicians can throw to constituents to
gain their votes and removes students from an overbuilt Louisiana higher education
system that because of its surplus capacity already faces fiscal burdens (even
as this would encourage more high school students and families to work harder
and increase their educational attainment to meet these higher standards).
For these reasons, this reform
has been a hard sell, with even Gov. Bobby
Jindal expressing reluctance to allow changing standards. Yet the reason
its costs have ballooned and it works so inefficiently precisely is because of
its muddled nature. Only by resolving that – making it a true scholarship
program or a means-tested welfare program – can it gain the coherence necessary
to work well. The latter option seems more appropriately handled through the
state’s cash gift to college students, the GO Grants program, so unless TOPS
reform emphasizes increasing standards and asks students to take on a greater
stake in earning this gift of higher education, the muddled mess that currently
exists will continue to underperform wastefully.
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