In recent weeks, high schools from Kittery to Fort Kent have bestowed hundreds of diplomas on the Class of 2016. Congratulations, Maine graduates. You’ve passed a major milestone. You have amazing opportunities before you, but there are also obstacles ahead — some seemingly insurmountable. Making post-secondary education more affordable is one immediate concern for our young graduates’ futures and for Maine and the nation’s prosperity.
A high school diploma is no longer the ticket to a steady, well-paying job with health benefits, paid sick leave and vacations, a retirement pension and job security on which workers and their families could depend. In April, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that median weekly earnings for a full-time American worker age 25 and over without a high school diploma were $494 per week ($25,688 per year), compared with $679 for high school graduates with no college degree ($35,308 per year) and $1,250 ($65,000 per year) for those holding at least a bachelor’s degree.
Rising college costs present unappealing choices: Enter the workforce without a degree, delay until you and your family can afford it, take some courses without completing a degree, or assume crushing student loan debt. Even with scholarships and other financial aid, it can take years, perhaps decades, to retire that debt, limiting a family’s ability to invest in a home, a business, children’s education and retirement. It especially discourages pursuit of additional education necessary to get a better job.
Approximately 57 percent of Maine’s college-bound high school graduates will enroll in one of the state’s public higher education institutions: the University of Maine System, Maine Community College System and Maine Maritime Academy. But for 25 years state financial support for these institutions has eroded steadily. In 1991, state funding accounted for 72 percent of operating revenues for Maine’s higher education institutions while students and their families paid the remaining 28 percent. By 2012, the state’s share had fallen to just 43 percent while cost to students and their families more than doubled to 57 percent.
A 2013 Working Poor Families Project analysis of census data found that 32 percent of Maine adults ages 18 to 64 have only a high school diploma or GED and 25 percent have some post-secondary education but no degree.
The nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that since the Great Recession per-student Maine higher education funding has fallen by $709, or 8 percent, while per-student tuition at state-supported schools increased by $1,190, or 14 percent. State funding for higher education would be even lower if it weren’t for modest funding increases for the University of Maine and Maine Community College systems in the bipartisan biennial budget, enacted in 2015 over Gov. Paul LePage’s veto.
With an average student loan debt of $30,908, graduates from Maine higher education institutions carry the sixth highest debt burden in the nation. In 2012, the congressional Joint Economic Committee reported Maine’s debt-to-income ratio was the fourth-highest in the nation— meaning our young graduates are deeper in debt than in most other states. According to the latest available data, 14.5 percent of Maine borrowers under 30 are delinquent on their loans.
Nationally and in Maine, we need a reinvigorated commitment to invest in public higher education, to provide a strong economy for all of us. After World War II, the GI Bill provided free college to millions of Americans. Today’s grants and loans are woefully inadequate for many students. The average net price of community college attendance for a low-income student — from a family earning less than $21,000 per year — is $8,000 per year, or 40 percent of a family’s annual income, even after Pell Grants and the maximum federal student loan. Increasing need-based funding and student loan reforms to make repayment easier are key steps Congress can take.
In Maine, the Legislature should increase appropriations to the University of Maine System to reduce public college costs and improve Maine Community College System funding to make it more responsive to student and workforce demand. Legislators also should expand the State of Maine Grant program to fund all of Maine’s neediest students at a rate of $5,500 per year. Maine lawmakers should look to Oregon and Tennessee, which guarantee tuition-free community college to high school graduates and GED holders. Washington state’s Free to Finish initiative, which would pay for a degree program’s final 15 credits, is another promising model.
State and federal policymakers have begun to acknowledge that failure to invest robustly in higher education and to shrink student loan debt dramatically limits the prospects for financial security and prosperity for current and future generations and is a drag on the economy and the well-being of all Americans.
Mark Sullivan is communications director at the Maine Center for Economic Policy.