Evidence of grade inflation continues to mount in K-12 education and at universities (e.g., see here and here). The rising grades reflect a degradation of academic standards. There is clear evidence that when expectations of students are lowered, they (intuitively) respond with less effort.

A recent example of a low-standards grading philosophy is equity-based grading. The philosophy, intended to promote equity by recognizing the varied circumstances and challenges students face, emphasizes measures of student engagement rather than results. However, by de-emphasizing important skills such as turning in assignments on time and demonstrating skills on assessments, it lowers academic standards, reducing effort for true mastery. Cory Koedel recently wrote in this space about how the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) backed away from a “Grading for Equity” plan when too many community members complained.

A new low-standards philosophy, Labor-Based Grading (LBG), is also gaining traction in higher education. LBG is an alternative grading style in which students and teachers establish a grading contract that allows students to earn a default grade if all the work outlined in the contract is completed, no matter the quality of the work.

Notably, departments at prominent universities such as Penn State University and New York University have recently begun implementing LBG (mainly humanities departments—here and here). Practices at prominent universities often trickle down to less-prominent ones, and ultimately into K-12 classrooms as future educators who are exposed to these practices in college implement them in their own classrooms. LGB could come to a school near you, and sooner rather than later.

The key concern is that LBG does not set up students for success. In the real world, effort is not rewarded if it does not generate productive outcomes. In fact, it is a critical life skill to be able to apply effort in a productive manner. But LBG rewards effort for effort’s sake.

LBG exemplifies the continued push by some to lower academic standards. It is well intended, but this doesn’t make it any less harmful. It is important to remain vigilant and continue to advocate for rigor in a system where rigor is constantly under assault.

The post The Rise of Labor-Based Grading and the Continuing De-emphasis on Skill Development at U.S. Universities appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Now that we have reached the (projected) enrollment peak and are heading down the cliff, Missouri needs to begin considering the implications for higher education and the workforce. First, the state should focus on the cost and access of public colleges and universities. Second students not planning on attending college should have access to career-building skills and certificates while still in high school. Finally, and most importantly, every Missouri high school graduate should leave school college or career ready.

We’ve known about these trends for a while, but there’s still time to adjust to our new enrollment reality if we make needed changes now. We’ll see if Missouri lawmakers actually follow through.

The post This Is Not a Drill appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Susan Pendergrass speaks to Mike McShane and Rick Hess about their new book Getting Education Right: A Conservative Vision for Improving Early Childhood, K–12, and College.

In Getting Education Right: A Conservative Vision for Improving Early Childhood, K–12, and College, Frederick M. Hess and Michael Q. McShane argue that America has too long suffered from the absence of a robust, coherent, and principled conservative vision for educational improvement. The problem? The right has too narrowly focused on school choice, campus speech, and shrinking Washington’s footprint, while the left has sought to subsidize and supersize the status quo. The solution? An education system imbued with shared values, respectful of family ties, and equipped for the challenges of the 21st century.

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Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

The post Getting Education Right with Mike McShane and Rick Hess appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Think of it this way. When someone enters the teaching field after graduating from college, they are called “teacher.” Over the next 30 years, they can get a master’s degree, a specialist degree, or even a doctoral degree. They may attend numerous professional development sessions every year. When they retire, they may still be called “teacher.”

There are no ranks. There are no promotions. There are no steps to career advancement. The only pay raises they will receive will be based on getting additional degrees and each year of experience.

Compare this to higher education. At the higher education level, you may enter as a teaching or research professor not on a tenure track or on a tenure track. Typically, a new professor is called an “assistant” professor. After a few years, the professor can be promoted to “associate” professor and eventually to “full” professor. There are also prized “endowed professor” positions. In short, there are tiers to the profession.

This is not to say higher education is the pinnacle of excellence that should be modeled in every circumstance. Rather, this simply demonstrates the key differences between K-12 teaching and most other fields. In most public school districts, there is no room for advancement within the teaching profession. The only way to advance is to leave the classroom by becoming a principal, superintendent, or something else.

We can imagine a system where teachers are recognized for their performance in the classroom and rewarded in title and in compensation. Teachers need a system that recognizes and rewards excellence—call it merit pay, if you will. They need the opportunity to grow, to excel, and to be rewarded. That is the type of advancement opportunity teachers need. With that said, we should be wary of attempts to create a centralized advancement system from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) or the legislature. The state should empower local communities and local school leaders to develop routes for advancement for their teachers. Centrally imposed systems often become bureaucratic hoops to jump through. Local school leaders may be more motivated to create meaningful advancement opportunities. But this sort of reform surrounding advancement is what we should be focusing on—not red herrings about professional development.

The post Teachers Need Advancement Opportunities, Not Just Professional Development appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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The post The Great School Rethink with Rick Hess appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

When universities require applicants to swear fealty to equity, what are they asking them to commit to? Are they asking people to pledge their support for equity policies such as this new mortgage policy? If not, what are they asking applicants to pledge their support to?

This is the problem with requiring DEI statements. Without a clear understanding of what the employer is looking for, one can only speculate about the purpose and intent of a DEI statement. If an applicant gives an answer that is out of step with the ideology held by most at the university, will that person be denied a job? This is one of the reasons why conservatives have called this requirement nothing more than a political litmus test that should not be allowed at public universities.

In March, University of Missouri System President Mun Choi sent an email to faculty that outlined a new policy prohibiting the use of DEI statements in hiring. Instead, the university will ask candidates to reply to the following statement, which Choi called a “values commitment”:

We value the uniqueness of every individual and strive to ensure each person’s success. Contributions from individuals with diverse backgrounds, experiences and perspectives promote intellectual pluralism and enable us to achieve the excellence that we seek in learning, research and engagement.

This commitment makes our university a better place to work, learn and innovate. In your application materials, please discuss your experiences and expertise that support these values and enrich our missions of teaching, research and engagement.

This change is a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, many public universities in the state still require an ideological litmus test DEI statements. It is time for more leaders, in the legislature and in higher education, to take a stand against these practices.

The post Mortgages, Job Applications, and Equity appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

While starting your career with $25,000 plus in student loan debt can create challenges, these are somewhat offset by the higher earnings a college degree holder can expect. Yet, once again, student loan debt forgiveness is being floated as an economic policy. Let’s be clear: This relief is directed at the one in five Missourians who can expect significantly higher earnings over their lifetimes. Everyone else is left with nothing except picking up the tab. What about car loans? What about credit card debt?

This is a textbook example of a regressive tax; relief for higher earners at the expense of lower earners. Expensive government giveaways create bad precedent. They incentivize bad behaviors. And, like it or not, they have to be paid for at some point. Sorry to be a Grinch, but don’t ask Santa to forgive your student loans.

For more on this topic, click here to listen to our podcast with the Cato Institute’s Neal McCluskey:

The post What About the other 80 Percent of Missourians? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The study examined 13 KIPP middle schools that had more applicants than seats available, so researchers were able to track the kids who got into the KIPP schools and those that didn’t. The groups of students are comparable because they all applied to KIPP schools, and thus have similar qualities like motivation and parental support. The results show that students enrolled in KIPP middle schools were 13 percent more likely to enroll in a 4–year college than students who did not. The study states that “the impact of attending a KIPP school would be almost large enough to erase the nationwide racial disparity in college enrollment rates.”

Nationally, KIPP has 242 schools and serves more than 100,000 students. St. Louis currently has six KIPP schools, including two middle schools and a high school. Kansas City has just two, including one middle school. There are so many more disadvantaged students outside of St. Louis and Kansas City who could benefit from a high-performing charter school like a KIPP school. Under Missouri’s current charter school laws, only the three percent of Missouri students in the St. Louis City or Kansas City school districts even have the option to apply for lottery admissions to KIPP schools. Charter school expansion could bring effective schools to students all over the state, giving students in urban and rural areas access to quality education.

The post Charter Schools Can Help More Students Get to College appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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And while loan forgiveness would provide immediate relief to debt holders, it’s important to make the distinction between debt relief and actual education policy. Loan forgiveness would be a very costly policy that wouldn’t expand access to college. In fact, a recent analysis of the costs and benefits of several forms of “free college” found that only one didn’t create education benefits that exceeded the costs. And that was loan forgiveness. Why? Because in this case, those who qualify have already received their education. The benefit of that education is there whether their loans are forgiven or not. So the benefit stays the same, and the cost goes up.

If a student loan holder truly didn’t understand what they were signing up for, they should have a broad array of repayment options tied to their salary. If they were scammed by a loan processor or for-profit college that was selling snake oil, by all means they should have recourse. But a plan to take one point in time and forgive all debt for all holders, regardless of their occupation, income, or repayment status is being floated in order to make headlines by those who make a living spending other people’s money on other people.

We can do better.

The post Student Loan Forgiveness Isn’t Education Policy appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Currently, only four out of ten lower-income students who enter college are graduating within six years. What’s more, few additional students graduate after six years; according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, only an additional 6.1 percent of all students entering college in 2009 graduated within eight years. Dropping out and being saddled with student loan debt makes it that much more difficult for these students to climb up the income ladder and access better-paying jobs that can help break cycles of poverty.

Here’s the data for first-time students in Missouri who started college full-time in the fall of 2011, per the Department of Education:

·         56.7 percent of those students graduated within six years, which is lower than the national average of 60.4 percent.

·         Students from the same group receiving Pell Grants from the federal government—most of which have family incomes below $30,000—have a six-year graduation rate in Missouri of only 40.6 percent, while students not receiving Pell Grants or a subsidized loan graduated at a rate of 68.3 percent.

These are startling numbers for Missouri. Not only are we behind the national average in terms of college completion, but a large number of those who fail to graduate appear to be low-income students. Those are exactly the kind of students who are least equipped to handle the burden of high student debt, especially without the benefit of a degree.

A 2013 report from the Department of Education estimated that in 2009 students who did not complete their degree had on average $9,300 of debt if they attended a public 4-year school and $10,400 if they attended a private, non-profit 4-year school. More recent data from Debt by Degree breaks down student loan debt by Pell status and individual schools; it showed Pell recipients attending Mizzou average $19,328 in federal loans.

Addressing the degree achievement gap must start at the K-12 level and, as I discussed before, competition through choice is necessary if we want better outcomes for low-income kids. But in the meantime, making changes at the college level can help lower-income students getting ready to go to college now or that are already there.

In “Creating Pathways for Self-Sufficiency,” I discuss a few ways colleges can boost graduation rates among low-income students. Retention grants or emergency scholarships can fill gaps in financial aid for low-income students who are on track to graduate but would otherwise have to drop out due to lack of funds. Providing supports like mentorships and enrollment or financial aid checklists have been effective in helping first generation college students be prepared.

Not included in my essay but also worth noting is data-based guidance counseling. Georgia State University’s predictive analytics system has helped students from all economic backgrounds graduate at higher rates by connecting students struggling academically with tutors sooner rather than later and making sure students are not taking unnecessary classes that cost extra time and money.

As taxpayers, we invest too many public dollars in education at every level to have results like these. Isn’t it time to move towards a system that better serves students of all economic backgrounds and ensures that those who go to college leave with a degree?

The post The Achievement Gap for Low-income Students Continues into College appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

• Internships are open to current undergraduate and graduate students, as well as recent graduates. 
• Internships last approximately ten weeks. The exact starting and ending dates are flexible, but we anticipate that each internship will run from June 3 until August 16.
• Summer interns will work a full-time schedule (9 a.m. to 5 p.m.). 
• Interns will be involved in many aspects of the Institute’s operations. Interns will work closely with senior staff on a wide variety of projects. They can expect greater responsibility and personal attention than they would receive at larger organizations.
• Interns will assist staff members with a variety of tasks. These may include researching public policy topics, assisting with social media, organizing events, and writing and editing op-eds, newsletter articles, studies, and other documents. Some administrative and clerical tasks will also be required.
• Policy internships as well as communications and development internships are available.
• A Show-Me Institute internship is an excellent opportunity to improve your research and writing skills. Each intern will produce regular blog posts and an op-ed on a public policy topic of interest to him or her. Each intern will receive feedback and assistance from staff members throughout the process.
• Internships are offered in both the St. Louis and Kansas City offices.
• Interns will be paid on an hourly basis.

Those wishing to be considered for an internship should submit the application (see below) and the requested supporting materials. The deadline for applications is Friday, April 26, 2019. However, we will begin conducting interviews as applications are received. Applicants can expect a decision in mid to late May.

The post Summer Internships appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Missouri’s low unemployment rate is welcome news, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. There are other important factors that predict economic well-being, such as labor force participation and statewide output, where Missouri’s economy is underperforming compared to other states. Tennessee, for example, is a demographically similar state but has shown significant growth compared to Missouri while also boasting a 3.5 percent unemployment rate.

As shown in the graphs below, Missouri’s labor force is stagnating. During an economic expansion, one would expect the number of interested laborers to increase. Missouri, however, defies these expectations. Our labor force shrunk by almost 30,000 people from 2016 to 2017. In this same period, our neighbor to the southeast, Tennessee, saw a spike in their labor force with 81,000 people joining.

People are entering the workforce in Tennessee to take advantage of the employment opportunities there. Some are Tennessee residents who have decided to look for work, and some are coming from outside the state. The state’s low unemployment rate suggests that Tennessee is capable of absorbing these additional potential workers and turning them into payroll employees. Compared to Missouri, Tennessee is attracting and employing people at a faster rate.

Additionally, Missouri’s production lags behind that of Tennessee as well. Missouri’s real gross domestic product, the measure of overall economic health, is growing slowly. Since 2012, Tennessee routinely experienced 2 to 4 percent annual growth in real GDP. Missouri struggles to hit 1 percent annual growth. The growing gap between Missouri’s and Tennessee’s GDPs, shown below, is stark.

Such slow growth is problematic for Missouri’s economy. The national economy is doing well, but Missouri is failing to take advantage of the rising levels of consumption, investment, and employment found throughout the country and is consequently losing out on major economic opportunities.

So what about Tennessee as compared to Missouri makes its economy grow faster and pull more people into the workforce? There are a few possibilities. First, Tennessee has no income tax, and two years ago Tennessee began to phase out the tax on investment income and will eliminate it entirely by 2022. Second, beginning in 2014 Governor Bill Haslam started reforming higher education by offering all high school graduates the opportunity to earn an associate’s degree or professional certification at no cost to them. Moreover, there has been greater coordination between colleges and businesses to ensure that the curriculum fits employers’ needs so that students learn skills that are in high demand. Third, Tennessee is a Right-to-Work state. Fourth, Tennessee is known as having a business-friendly environment.

It may be hard to pinpoint exactly what has led to Tennessee’s success, but tax-cutting policies combined with investment in workforce development and other pro-business policies like Right to Work stand out as reasons Tennessee is experiencing growth that Missourians can only envy. Continuing to push for elimination of the individual income tax and exploring potential workforce development policies could work just as well in Missouri.

The post Missouri’s Economy Struggles Despite a Low Unemployment Rate appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Show-Me Institute is pleased to offer internship opportunities for Summer 2018.

• Internships are open to current undergraduate and graduate students, as well as recent graduates.
• Internships last approximately ten weeks. The exact starting and ending dates are flexible, but we anticipate that each internship will run from June 4 until August 17.
• Summer interns will work a full-time schedule (9 a.m.-5 p.m.).
• Interns will be involved in many aspects of the Institute’s operations. Interns will work closely with senior staff on a wide variety of projects. They can expect greater responsibility and personal attention than they would receive at larger organizations.
• Interns will assist staff members with a variety of tasks. These may include researching public policy topics, organizing events, and writing and editing op-eds, newsletters, studies, and other documents. Some administrative and clerical tasks also will be required.
• Policy internships as well as communications and development internships are available.
• A Show-Me Institute internship is an excellent opportunity to improve your research and writing skills. Each intern will produce regular blog posts and an op-ed on a public policy topic of interest to him or her. Each intern will receive feedback and assistance from SMI staff members throughout the process.
• Internships are located in either our St. Louis or Kansas City office.
• Interns will be paid on an hourly basis.

Those wishing to be considered for an internship should submit the enclosed application and the requested supporting materials. The deadline for applications is Friday, April 27, 2018. However, we will begin conducting interviews as applications are received. Applicants can expect a decision in mid to late May.

About the Show-Me Institute

Founded in 2005, the Show-Me Institute is a non-partisan, non-profit public policy research organization. The mission of the Institute is advancing liberty with responsibility by promoting market solutions for Missouri public policy. For more information:

Phone: (314) 454-0647

Email: intern@showmeinstitute.org

Web: www.showmeinstitute.org

Summer 2018 Intern Application Form.doc

The post Summer Internships appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But if the conversation about workforce development ends there, then it will have covered only the “seen” impact of public policy. Instead, policymakers should also consider the unseen consequences of oversubsidizing fields offered through our higher education system and neglecting other possible workforce investments. As the cargo-cultification of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) jobs has escalated in public policy circles in recent years, workforce development policy has increasingly emphasized professions requiring at least a bachelor’s degree, while other quality jobs that don’t require that version of education have been neglected—or even denigrated. 

Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs fame, who’s become a fierce public proponent of jobs of all stripes, may have put it best in this response to a detractor last year:

To be clear—I strongly support education in all its forms. I have a college degree, and as I’ve said many times, it’s served me well. But I believe society is making a terrible mistake by promoting college at the expense of all other forms of education. For instance, the surgeon you reference (who I would indeed prefer to have graduated from an accredited university) will never make it to the hospital to successfully remove my appendix without a functional infrastructure, which depends almost entirely upon an army of skilled tradespeople. And yet, our society clearly values the surgeon far more than mechanic who keeps her car running, or the contractor who put in the roads that allows her to drive to the emergency room.

We need people with formal higher educations. We also need people in professions that don’t require such degrees. The perception—often promoted by four-year institutions seeking tax dollars—that high paying jobs require degrees is plainly wrong.

It certainly remains true that four-year degree holders tend to make more than those who don’t hold such a degree, but while the average salary might be higher, there is a lot of variance in those numbers when you get down to the individual level. I have countless friends in their early 30s with undergraduate and graduate degrees who are scraping by under the twin pressures of loan payments and compressed salaries in both STEM and non-STEM professions. At the same time, I also know countless blue-collar professionals in their early 20s who have been catapulted into life’s comforts with a rising middle class salary thanks to professions like construction that, especially now, have tons of jobs but hardly enough trained professionals to fill them. (We’ve talked about this issue before.) 

Policymakers who believe in limited government need to reassess what the state spends its money on—what the state subsidizes directly and indirectly—and this is as true in the realm of workforce development as it is in other parts of the budget. Surely, STEM industries and other higher education programs deserve attention, but policymakers should exercise considerable caution in treating those jobs as talismanic rather than as components in a much larger, and much more diverse, state jobs portfolio.

The post Workforce Development Must Encompass the Spectrum of Professions appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But repeal of the state’s prevailing wage law won’t put Missouri’s tradespeople on the fast track to pauperdom. Indeed, in true supply-and-demand fashion, a shortage of skilled laborers in the construction industry is already driving up salaries there.

“I think that all craft professionals are in the mid-to-upper five-figures, and once you add in per diem and bonuses and incentives, it is not uncommon that we have workers making six-figures,” [Steve Green, vice president of the National Center for Construction Education & Research] said, adding that often accounts “for a lot of overtime.”

With a slew of good paying available jobs, why is the labor shortage so pronounced?

“Construction is not a sexy profession: we don’t attract the younger workers like other professions do,” NCCER president Don Whyte said, adding that his organization is trying to change public perceptions to show that through construction, families can earn a robust middle-class living.

There are a lot of layers to this policy onion. Americans have long placed a premium on a college education, viewing it as a proxy for eventual prosperity while, in important respects, stigmatizing professions where a formal education isn’t required. Certainly college-educated individuals, on average, make more than those who don’t have a college degree, but the rising cost of that education and changing contours of the modern economy have taken a toll on the economic slam-dunk that college once was. Complicating matters further is that as government has subsidized college educations, it has produced more college graduates who otherwise wouldn’t have chosen college — and who instead might have become skilled tradespeople, creating a workforce gap in an industry which, literally, builds our country.

That’s a long way of saying that Missouri probably needs to reassess the way it looks at its workforce policies. The state spends hundreds of millions of dollars every year providing Missourians the opportunity for a college education, but is focusing on college-educated professions a silver bullet for a balanced economic future? Probably not. And that’s why recent efforts to promote apprenticeship programs in the state are not only welcome, but necessary to the economic future of Missouri.

To be sure, the best way to advance that goal will require robust debate, but it’s long past time that the state looked at its workforce portfolio and recognized that a college education leading to gainful employment is good for the state—but so too is a debtless apprenticeship in an industry that will pay handsomely for those services. I hope this important workforce issue gets the attention it deserves this session.

The post An Emerging Policy Frontier: Workforce Development appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

• Internships are open to current undergraduate and graduate students, as well as recent graduates. 
• Spring internships will last approximately four months. The exact starting and ending dates are flexible, but each intern is expected to work at least 10 weeks.  No internship shall start prior to January 15. Spring internships will end on or before May 4, 2018.
• Spring interns can work a full-time schedule (9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with one hour for lunch), or arrange for a part-time schedule to accommodate class schedules. 
• Interns will be involved in virtually all aspects of the Institute’s operations. Interns will work closely with senior staff on a wide variety of projects. They can expect greater responsibility and personal attention than they would receive at larger organizations.
• Interns will assist staff members with a variety of tasks. These may include researching public policy topics, assisting with social media, organizing events, and writing and editing op-eds, newsletter articles, studies, and other documents. Some administrative and clerical tasks will also be required.
• A Show-Me Institute internship is an excellent opportunity to improve your research and writing skills. Each intern will produce regular blog posts and an op-ed on a public policy topic of interest. Each intern will receive feedback and assistance from SMI staff members throughout the process.
• Communication and development internships are also available. If interested, please state this in your application.
• Internships are offered in both the Saint Louis and Kansas City offices.
• Interns will be paid on an hourly basis.

Those wishing to be considered for an internship should submit an application (link below) and the requested supporting materials no later than December 8, 2017. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis. We will begin conducting interviews as applications are received. Applicants can expect a decision no later than Monday, January 8, 2018.

The post Spring 2018 Internships appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Obama administration’s guidelines had come under criticism as more and more individuals accused of sexual assault came forward to argue that their due process rights were being violated.

The “Dear Colleague” letter (and subsequent communications by the Department of Education) offered several bits of problematic guidance. First, the letter directed universities to follow what is called a “single investigator” model when pursuing these claims, meaning that a university employee would, as Emily Yoffe of the Atlantic wrote, act as “detective, prosecutor, judge, and jury” for the case. There is a reason why we separate those responsibilities in our court system.

Standard rules of evidence that we would expect any court of law to follow did not have to be followed. Because of the opaque nature of these investigations, those accused did not have a right to submit evidence on their own behalf or cross-examine witnesses or experts. In fact, those accused of these crimes did not even have to be notified of the specific complaint against them. It was a recipe for disaster.

At the core of all investigations is the balance between the rights of the accused and the rights of the accusers. As both Yoffe and Robby Soave of Reason.com have documented in heartbreaking detail, current processes have failed both of these groups. Due process helps to ensure that the guilty are punished and that the innocent are not. With an issue as serious as sexual assault, it is that much more important that fair and transparent procedures are followed. Let’s hope that this period of public comment brings them back into balance.

The post Education Department to Revisit Title IX Guidelines for Sexual Assault Investigations appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I think this is a great idea, for one reason that is obvious, and for another that might be less so.

The obvious reason is that we have a public university system (note that the university’s name for the program harkens back to the “land grant” nature of Mizzou) to provide higher education to bright students who might not otherwise be able to afford it. This intuition is not new in America.

Thomas Jefferson, the father of the University of Virginia, himself wrote of students:

“that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or other accidental condition or circumstance; but the indigence of the greater number disabling them from so educating, at their own expence, those of their children whom nature hath fitly formed and disposed to become useful instruments for the public, it is better that such should be sought for and educated at the common expence of all, than that the happiness of all should be confided to the weak or wicked.”

As college costs increase, our universities are pricing out many students who would thrive at them, but simply cannot afford the skyrocketing tuition. This program will work to solve that problem and we should laud it for that.

But the second reason why this program is a great idea is subtler.

In the past, efforts to try and help low income student attend college have had unintended consequences. Typically, states and the federal government have given low-income students scholarships, like Pell grants, or subsidized loans to help defray the cost of education. In response, many universities started to “price” these scholarships into the cost of tuition, banking on the fact that students will automatically be able to pay it, and this has driven up the cost of schooling.

Mizzou’s program is different. Rather than rely on outside funding, Mizzou is footing the bill itself. That means that any increase in the cost of providing an education is borne by Mizzou. This should provide a powerful disincentive for the school to become more expensive.

Now, the devil is always in the details, and the program isn’t launching for another school year, so we won’t know the full scope and effect of the program for some time. But if programs like these are representative of the type of bold thinking that university leaders are engaging in, Mizzou is putting itself on a much better path into the future.

The post It’s a Good Idea for Mizzou to Cover Tuition for Low-Income Students, but the Reason May Surprise You appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

For years, educators and some lawmakers in the state have railed against the legislature for failing to fully fund the foundation formula for K-12 public schools. Last year, one lawmaker said her colleagues “refuse” to fund the formula. While lawmakers could choose to fully fund the formula, they aren’t simply deciding to withhold money without reason. Those dollars have to come from somewhere, which means less funding for other programs.

Indeed, this year lawmakers have passed a budget that increases aid for the foundation formula by $45 million, to a total of $3.4 billion. For the first time since the new formula was enacted in 2006, lawmakers will fully fund the formula.

Did they find that elusive money tree? No, of course not. They simply took the money from somewhere else (and they wisely reinstated a cap to growth of the foundation formula target amount)

One place hit hard by this reallocation of funds was higher education. As a result, higher education administrators are making cuts and laying off staff. (Full disclosure: I am a professor at UMSL which has been negatively impacted by the budget cuts).

State lawmakers have done exactly what you and I do when the budget is tight: shift funds from one thing to another. This will always happen as different administrations prioritize one thing over another. The only way to reduce the need to shift money around is to increase the amount of money available by growing the economy. To do this, policymakers should refer to the Show-Me Institute’s 20 for 2020 policy proposals. We’re far more likely to find new revenue for schools through sensible policy reform than by looking for it on trees.

The post Money Doesn’t Grow on Trees, But We Can Grow the Economy appeared first on Show-Me Institute.