Public universities are facing a new economic reality, as states decide to reduce funding and expect a lot more fiscal accountability. Now, in response, schools are cutting costs, raising tuition, and sometimes both. Jenna Ashley Robinson, outreach coordinator for the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, says there is an area of untapped savings these public universities should pursue. Robinson discussed the issue with Donna Martinez for Carolina Journal Radio. (Click here to find a station near you or to learn about the weekly CJ Radio podcast.)

Martinez: Let’s set the stage first before we talk about your recommendations. How tough is it for public university systems around the country right now?

Robinson: It’s rough because they’ve been used to getting all the money that they’ve asked for, both from the federal government and from state governments. And that money is not quite as forthcoming. Of course, this year, they have to deal with the fact that there isn’t any stimulus money that they had been getting for years. And also, North Carolina isn’t being quite as generous, we don’t think, as they have been in the past. They’re not really getting a cut, although they are getting less than they expected from their continuation budget.

Martinez: Why have public university systems always been darlings of budget writers — not just in North Carolina, but in many, many states?

Robinson: Well, I think that for years we’ve heard that higher education is the ticket to a good job. It’s the ticket to economic development. Also, a lot of our legislators and a lot of our budget writers are products of these systems themselves. Those are their alma maters they’re funding. So, of course, they’re going to be generous.

Martinez: We’ve seen some changes in the economy — obviously a terrible downturn over the past several years — and you have been looking at some trends. Tell us what some university systems have been doing in response to the economy itself and/or what’s actually happening with their public budgets.

Robinson: Enrollment, we’ve just seen, has been down a little bit for 2011-12 — the first time in quite a while — so students themselves are making some changes. They’re looking a little bit more at whether going to university is actually worth it, and so we’ve seen enrollments decline a little bit. Then also, universities are having to pare back. They’re having to look at places where they can be a little bit more efficient. One of the things that North Carolina is doing is changing the way it figures out who is a resident and who isn’t. It used to be that every school in the system did it separately. They’re going to pool that to save a little money. And there are a lot of other ways that they’re kind of trimming administrative cost to try to make up for some of the money that they won’t be getting in the future.

Martinez: Have they been raising tuition?

Robinson: They absolutely have been raising tuition, and that’s something that’s been static kind of across all the universities. That tactic has been very popular, and it’s gone up quite a bit, including here in North Carolina in the past 10 years, and even going back 30 years. Tuition has always been increasing.

Martinez: So it sounds as if they’ve tried several things to adjust to this new economic environment, whether it’s trying to be more efficient, maybe cutting some costs, or raising the tuition. But, Jenna, you have been doing some analysis, along with your colleague, Jay Schalin. The two of you wrote a paper, basically saying that there is one area that these systems really haven’t tapped. Tell us what it is.

Robinson: We first started looking at it when Harry Stille, who is at a think tank in South Carolina, brought some data to our attention, showing us that a lot of students are either not completing their studies at all or taking a lot longer to graduate than we expect of them. And for every extra semester that a student is in college, that’s extra money that the state is funneling toward their education.

Martinez: Because we think of the university — at least I do — as getting a four-year degree.

Robinson: Right.

Martinez: But it’s not four years for a lot of these folks.

Robinson: No. In fact, I think, thinking of it in the four-year degree terms — we still use that — but the reality now is more like five or six years for a lot of students.

Martinez: Do we have any way of trying to quantify how much it is costing states or costing North Carolina to continue to fund students — the same student who is continuing to go on in a fifth or a sixth year, to try to get a degree?

Robinson: Right. It’s hard to really put it in terms for the whole state, but for one student for one semester, it can be anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000 extra that the state is putting into that education for just spending an extra semester in school.

Martinez: That’s a lot of money. Are you recommending that states stop funding after four years?

Robinson: We’re not recommending that they stop funding, but we’re recommending that they start finding ways to make sure students graduate on time, particularly the students who they think [are] going to graduate anyway. Let’s try to get them out a little bit faster. Of course, there are always going to be students who don’t graduate for various reasons — either they found the classes too hard, they found a different opportunity, they found a university was a better fit — so we can’t expect 100 percent graduation. But for those students who are going to graduate anyway, we want to find all the ways we can to make sure that they’re going to do so in as few semesters as possible.

Martinez: What are some of those strategies? What could they do?

Robinson: Some of the strategy is looking at students on the way in. Stop admitting students who have very little chance of graduating. Some of the recommendations that Harry Stille makes are to increase the admission standards up to about 900 on the SAT and 19 on the ACT. Don’t admit any students who are in the bottom half of their high school class, and don’t admit any students who require remediation. Insist that they do that in the community college system before they even start at a four-year school.

Martinez: Many of us think of the university system —particularly a very well-known, prestigious system like the University of North Carolina system — that it is, for lack of a better phrase, the cream of the crop who are going to our universities.

Robinson: Right. The UNC system has actually made a little bit of progress on this. They recently raised the minimum SAT up to 800 from where it was before. So that was new, and that started in 2010-11. We’re hoping that they will continue and it will go up to 900. There hasn’t been any activity on that. The number of students they’re remediating has gone down, but there still are a lot of schools that are doing remediation, that are admitting students from the bottom half of the class, and many schools that are admitting students with between 800 and 900 on their SAT — who are of course at very high risk of dropping out.

Martinez: The interesting thing, Jenna, is that when you make a recommendation like this, you, of course, are going against what is a very common mind-set that we need to be letting as many people as possible into the university system because there is an inherent benefit to people attending a university. You’re saying, well, maybe not.

Robinson: The truth is that, at a lot of universities, 50 percent or more of the students are going to drop out. And the inherent benefit to them is very, very hard to see. It’s costly for them. It takes up their time. They’re often borrowing. And so they’re coming out without any degree to show for it and with a lot of student debt. And for those students, it might be a lot better for them to go to a community college, to get a certificate, to enter the military, or to enter the work force, before they make that leap to a four-year degree.