We Should Rethink And Discuss Higher Education In North Idaho
Judy Meyer raised some interesting questions regarding duplication of services in higher education in North Idaho (“Colleges urged to cooperate,” The Handle, May 15). However, I don’t think she sees the larger picture.
Why do we have two public four-year colleges 30 miles from each other? How many upper division (junior and senior) students are in residence at Lewis-Clark State? Wouldn’t the state be better served if LCSC became Lewis-Clark Community College?
The state Board of Education and the Legislature ought to rethink higher education for the entire state. Wouldn’t it make more sense to change the Eastern Idaho Vocational-Technical Center to a full-blown community college, change LCSC to a community college and create two new community colleges, one in the Nampa-Caldwell area and one in the Fruitland area? This would give us a system of six community colleges feeding into three universities.
To finance this, we would need to rely on statewide financing, probably in the form of a statewide property tax devoted to higher education. This would ease the property tax burden on the three counties now paying for community colleges.
I admit property taxes are not in particular favor at the moment, but this seems to be a fair way to fund higher education on a statewide level.
We probably would need to continue to look at tuition as a means of providing a “user fee,” but we should look to charging tuition at the four-year schools as well. Why should accidents of geography provide some citizens with free schooling while others pay their fair share and more?
Using a statewide property tax would provide the means to keep local control of the community colleges. This is of absolute necessity if we are to keep them the vibrant, cutting-edge institutions they have become.
Think where we would be with the nationally recognized Work-force Training Center if the local board hadn’t stuck its collective neck out to get it financed. The state bureaucracy is too cumbersome to allow community colleges to respond to the changing needs of their constituencies in a timely fashion. Would we have the superb partnership that exists between our foundation and the college if we had to run everything through Boise?
Perhaps there are other ways to get to the same end. We should welcome reasoned debate on the issue. Gov. Phil Batt, to his credit, seems to welcome a dialogue. Perhaps now is the time to thoroughly discuss the future of higher education in our state.
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