Progress in study of college funding

It was encouraging last week to hear a near-universal consensus of the Higher Education Finance Study Commission in favor of the concept of performance-based funding - that is, a state aid formula for community colleges and public universities that is tied to student progress and graduation rather than enrollment.

It is only logical. After all, it doesn't really make sense to compensate schools primarily on the basis of the marketing that gets students in the door when the state's real objective depends on the education that does or does not take place once they are inside.

The job isn't to get students off the streets. The job is to prepare them for the future. So that is where a college should find its rewards.

The study commission - a large and disparate group of educators and civic leaders from a variety of interest groups - seems so far to agree.

At the conclusion of a meeting of the study commission Aug. 30 at Harper College in Palatine, commissioners were asked to summarize their early position on the issue, and around the table they went voicing general support.

The meeting centered on testimony from Eric Fingerhut, chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents, who was invited to explain how Ohio's new performance-based funding formula was developed and implemented.

In the written statement he provided, Fingerhut explained why he believes the concept makes sense from all points of view.

"Large numbers of dropouts or dropped courses represent the ultimate in financial inefficiency," Fingerhut said. "And it is just plain wrong to take students' tuition dollars or encourage them to go into debt to take courses that experience and data suggest they have a high likelihood of not completing."

Clearly, a couple of things have to happen if progress on this concept is to continue.

For one, any formula that is proposed must take into account "at-risk students," those students who, for a variety of reasons, are least likely to succeed in college.

If the formula does not accommodate them, colleges with historically large enrollments of these students would be sure to resist the change in funding.

Even worse, if somehow a reinvented funding formula were passed without an at-risk element, it would discourage colleges from accepting these students.

For another, college leaders must put aside their concerns about the state's funding stability when it comes to this debate. We sympathize with those legitimate concerns, but they could become a distraction to the debate and, in the end, they are irrelevant to it.

Performance-based funding isn't about how much money is available; it's about how to make the best use of what money there is.