OHIO EDUCATION Plan targets 2-year colleges

One official said the plan isn't to draw students from four-year schools.
COLUMBUS (AP) -- A plan to boost enrollment in Ohio higher education by 340,000 students over the next 10 years relies on increased emphasis on two-year colleges.
The Ohio Association of Community Colleges plan argues that the cost of a typical bachelor's degree could be reduced by at least 25 percent for someone who starts his studies at a two-year campus rather than at a four-year university.
The plan calls for universities to maintain freshman and sophomore enrollments at approximately current levels and focus enrollment growth on juniors and seniors through aggressive recruitment of transfer students.
University undergraduate enrollment is projected to increase at a rate of 5 percent per year. Most of the increased freshmen and sophomore enrollment would occur at community and technical colleges and branch campuses, which would expect enrollments to increase 11 percent to 12 percent per year.
Creating incentives
The association has proposed a restructuring of the state funding of higher education to create institutional incentives for the plan and require universities to maintain special scholarships for transfer students.
Roy Church, president of Lorain County Community College, said the intent is not to draw students away from the four-year schools.
"This is a bold goal for increasing participation in higher education," Church said.
The average community college in Ohio charges about $2,716 a year for tuition; Ohio's public four-year universities charge $6,301 a year, on average, according to the Ohio Board of Regents.
Many community colleges and universities have transfer agreements that allow students who take the right courses to transfer to universities as juniors after two years of successful community college study.
Carol Cartwright, president of Kent State University, said four-year campuses also support encouraging more Ohioans to earn college degrees.
"But we differ somewhat on the means," she said. "We believe there needs to be a lot of extensive dialogue about the complexities of getting from here to there."
Universities particularly don't like the part of the proposal by the association that would hold freshman and sophomore enrollment at current levels on the four-year campuses.
Cartwright said price isn't always the determining factor for prospective students, so the market needs two- and four-year options.
Sorting out the system
Church, who has presented the association's GOAL plan (Growing Ohio's Advanced Learners) to committees of the Governor's Commission on Higher Education and the Economy, said it's a way to sort out the state's system of higher education based on what each sector does best.
"That's not an indictment of the universities," said Church. "It's a different mission. Why wouldn't you play to the strength of the institutions?"
Both Cartwright and Church said Ohio must continue working to make it easier for students to transfer academic credits from one institution to another.
Efforts by colleges to reduce dropout rates also have boosted enrollments, said Sean Creighton, executive director of the Southwestern Ohio Council for Higher Education.
"More and more students are staying in school" as a result of work-study and other innovative programs launched by colleges to increase retention, Creighton said.