LOVELAND MAGAZINE

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Tag: ohio budget

  • Ohio private college presidents ask to get rid of proposed changes to Governor’s Merit Scholarship

    Ohio private college presidents ask to get rid of proposed changes to Governor’s Merit Scholarship

    Getty Images

    By:  – Ohio Capital Journel

    Ohio private college presidents slammed proposed requirements for participating in the Governor’s Merit Scholarship that were added to the House’s version of the two-year operating budget during testimony in the Senate Higher Education Committee.

    The committee had four hearings on the budget, which Senate lawmakers are currently working on. The Ohio House passed the budget last month and Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine must sign the budget by June 30.

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    Todd Jones, president and general counsel of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Ohio (AICUO), spoke out against provisions the Ohio House added to the budget regarding new requirements for private colleges if they want to continue to participate in the Governor’s Merit Scholarship, which gives the top 5% of each high school graduating class a $5,000 scholarship each year to go to an Ohio college or university.

    Under the new changes made in the House, private colleges would also have to accept the top 10% of Ohio’s graduating class and comply with parts of Senate Bill 1 — Ohio’s new higher education law that bans diversity and inclusion efforts and regulates classroom discussion, among other things.

    “I want to be clear that our concerns are not about DEI and SB 1,” Jones said. “Our concerns are about the very nature of our institutions and what it means to be a private, nonprofit institution. … When the state dictates our missions, board structures, curriculum, hiring practices, workloads, and public engagement, the autonomy that defines nonprofit institutions disappears.”

    Tiffin University President Lillian Schumacher said the S.B. 1 mandates would increase operational costs without improving educational outcomes.

    “For many institutions, these new burdens could lead to closures, reduced financial aid, higher tuition, and a reduction in critical educational services for students,” she said in her testimony.

    Forcing private colleges and universities to accept the top 10% of Ohio’s graduating class would create challenges for those institutions, Chancellor of the Ohio Department of Higher Education Mike Duffey said.

    “Public universities have the infrastructure with branch campuses, large-scale facilities, and state funding to absorb enrollment increases,” Jones said. “Independent institutions operate on much smaller scales.”

    Eight AICUO institutions function out of a single academic building, he said.

    “Imposing this mandate without providing financial or logistical support places an impractical burden on private colleges,” Jones said.

    Being able to welcome an additional influx of students depends on various factors including the students’ major, housing and financial needs, University of Findlay President Kathy Fell said.

    “I know we all agree that students will not benefit from this opportunity if approbate supports and resources for success are not available,” she said in her testimony.

    Aultman College President Jean Paddock said the 10% acceptance mandate would not be possible in healthcare programs that are limited to a capped number of seats.

    “With a nursing shortage well documented, sending our best and brightest who want to enter the healthcare field to other states is the opposite of what we want,” Paddock said in her testimony.

    The Governor’s Merit Scholarship was enacted through the last state budget two years ago and 76% of the state’s 6,250 eligible students from the class of 2024 accepted the scholarship. The acceptance rate was 100% in Hocking, Holmes, Putnam, Adams, Monroe, Noble, and Vinton counties, Duffey said.

    In the second year of the scholarship, 87% of Ohio students accepted the scholarship and 11 rural counties had a 100% acceptance rate, Duffey said.

    Ohio Sen. Jane Timken, R-Jackson Township, said she has received several inquiries from private colleges and universities with concerns about the Governor’s Merit Scholarship requirements being linked to compliance with parts of S.B. 1.

    “Clearly we would lose some students if they weren’t able to access those funds,” Duffey said.

    The budget currently allocates $47 million for fiscal year 2026 and $70 million for fiscal year 2027 for the Governor’s Merit Scholarship.

    Follow Capital Journal Reporter Megan Henry on Bluesky.

    EDITOR’S NOTE:

    These Loveland High School seniors earned a Governor’s Merit Scholarship. Only the top 5% of Ohio high school students are eligible for this scholarship, worth up to $5,000 toward tuition at an Ohio college or university.

    • Olivia Bast
    • McKenzie Dunlap
    • Chloe Finkler
    • Luis Garcia Saucedo
    • Daniel Gomez Carrillo
    • Jacob Hentz
    • Alyse Knapschaefer
    • Mackenzie Liu
    • Carter Lucas
    • CJ Margraf
    • Isaiah Marx
    • Jonas Moore
    • Tyler Roberts
    • Benjamin Tibbs
    • Sophia Yurovski
    Megan Henry
    Megan Henry

    Megan Henry is a reporter for the Ohio Capital Journal and has spent the past five years reporting in Ohio on various topics including education, healthcare, business and crime. She previously worked at The Columbus Dispatch, part of the USA Today Network.

    Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

    MORE FROM AUTHOR

  • How can we do higher quality early childhood programs in Ohio?

    How can we do higher quality early childhood programs in Ohio?

    Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

    Commentary by By Rob Moore and Ohio Capital Journal

    One provision in the Ohio Senate’s new $75 million budget passed last week that has garnered plenty of attention has to do with Step Up to Quality, the state’s system for promoting quality in early childhood programs in Ohio.

    The Senate budget removes the Step Up to Quality child care standards mandate, allowing child care providers to continue to get more money for meeting higher quality standards but not stopping payments for programs that don’t meet standards.

    The Columbus Dispatch reports that the Step Up to Quality mandate removal is a step to reduce costs for the state, which Senate President Matt Huffman’s staff estimates will cost the state an additional $640 million by 2024.

    The strange thing is that Step Up to Quality is currently savingthe state money — but not in the way you would think. The same Columbus Dispatch article quotes Allen County Job and Family Services Director Joe Patton. He says the number of child care providers taking public funds has dropped from 60 to 17 in the past decade, something he attributes to the mandate to participate in Step Up to Quality.

    This means that the requirements in Step Up to Quality could be leading providers to stop taking public funds so they don’t have to deal with these requirements.

    The evidence that we have suggests quality in early childhood education matters. We’ve seen positive examples of the impact of early childhood like the Perry Preschool Project and the Abecedarian Project. We’ve also seen the negative impact of expanding child care without quality controls in Quebec, leading to higher aggression and illness and lower motor and social skills among children and worse parenting relationships and health among parents.

    That being said, the evidence for the effectiveness of programs like Step Up to Quality are mixed.

    A 2019 evaluation of New Mexico’s “Step Up to Quality” equivalent conducted by the New Mexico Legislative Finance Committee found no evidence child care assistance led to improved educational outcomes. It did find that family income and child well-being improved among providers that participated in the program, but the specific ranking didn’t have any bearing on these outcomes.

    What this means is that, while it helped families to be a “one-star” program, they couldn’t find any difference between “one-star” and “five-star” programs. These programs, at least in this case, were likely measuring and requiring the wrong things.

    So what can we do better? One option is to focus more on outcomes than outputs. The New Mexico study above recommends creating evaluation plans for child care based on “measures of child health and social-emotional development, family economic improvement, and parental employment.”

    Another option is to put the state in charge of assessment of quality the same way it is in charge of assessing health conditions. Having early childhood assessors who go on-site to assess conditions would reduce reporting costs borne by providers and could tie assessment to widely-used measures like the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale.

    While we have good reason to believe early childhood education can grow the economy, reduce poverty, and improve lives, we still have a lot to learn about how to best foster it from a public policy standpoint. This is a system that will likely endure some substantial tweaking in the coming decade.