MPR’s Tim Post interviews various students, college administrators, and politicians on how they feel about attendees of private for-profit institutions being restricted from the State Grant Program. such institutions include business schools, truck driving schools, and barber colleges.
Low income college students in Minnesota can tap into the State Grant program to help pay their college tuition. It doesn't matter where they go, it can be a state school, a private non-profit university or a for-profit college, but some lawmakers want to change that.
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TIM POST: Most days, the Minnesota School of Barbering in Minneapolis opens its doors to the public.
GERY SCHALDER: Leave the sideburns where they're at and the trim all the way around.
TIM POST: For regular customers like Gery Schadler of Minneapolis, it's a bargain haircut, only $7. For student Greg Epps, it's a chance to practice the craft of barbering and the art of barber chit-chat.
GREG EPPS: So what you got going on for today?
GERY SCHALDER: Well, I got to go to the bank.
TIM POST: Students at the Minnesota School of Barbering spend just shy of $10,000 to attend the nine-month program. By comparison, that's about the same as one year of tuition at the University of Minnesota and more expensive than a year at one of Minnesota's state colleges, like Saint Cloud State University. Student Jacob Deisch, who's standing nearby waiting for a customer, says he paid his tuition mostly through private loans, but he also received money for tuition from Minnesota's state grant program.
JACOB DEISCH: It helps a lot to get through school.
TIM POST: Peggy Schmidt runs the Minnesota School of barbering. Schmidt says many of her students qualify for tuition aid from the state.
PEGGY SHMIDT: Between $2,000 and $3,000 per student.
TIM POST: But some Minnesota lawmakers feel that amounts to the state subsidizing a private business. Representative Karla Bigham, a Democrat from Cottage Grove says state aid should only go to students attending state universities or private colleges that aren't out to make a profit.
KARLA BIGHAM: I feel that we spend a lot of money on our higher education, institutions, and students that we ought to be putting the state grant money into them. We better-- we should be investing in them and not these for-profit, not subsidizing for-profit universities.
TIM POST: Bigham fashioned a bill this session that would stop students at private for-profit universities from getting any state grant money. The bill recently died in a House committee. But Bigham hopes a companion bill in the Senate fares better, or that the issue makes its way into another bill this session. According to the Minnesota office of higher education, a little over $20 million in state aid goes to 14,000 students who attend Minnesota's private for-profit schools each year. The state's for-profit universities say not allowing their students that money goes against the spirit of the state grant program. Tom Kosel is with Globe University Minnesota School of Business.
TOM KOSEL: In their language, they always say that they are guided by helping students achieve financial access to post-secondary education and secondly, to enable students to choose among post-secondary educational institutions. So this at a time when students really need training. This would limit some of their choices.
TIM POST: Kosel says stopping state aid for students at private for-profit schools isn't likely to hurt Globe University. That's the case for most private for-profit schools according to John Slama who chairs the Minnesota career College Association. Slama says it's only fair that students at for profit schools get the same help as other students.
JOHN SLAMA: I don't believe in the long run that it would be a serious detriment to us. I think it would be a far more serious detriment to our students.
TIM POST: State Representative Tom Rukavina, a DFLer from Virginia, chairs a House higher education committee where the issue has been discussed. Rukavina doesn't think lawmakers are picking on private for-profit schools. He says cutting the grant is really an issue of fairness as the legislature deals with the state's budget problems.
TOM RUKAVINA: I don't think that there is any appetite to completely cut the private career schools out of the picture. But if students are going to take a hit, they're all going to take a hit together.
TIM POST: Even if the move doesn't make it through the legislature this year, there's another problem looming for some of the state's private foR-profit colleges. In 2011, students attending a Minnesota college that's not regionally or federally accredited won't be eligible for state grant funds, as likely to affect students at Minnesota's smallest private foR-profit schools like the Minnesota School of Barbering. Tim Post, Minnesota Public Radio News, Minneapolis.