| From The Charleston
Gazette
Education chairman also concerned over grade uniformity for Promise
scholarships
Monday May 20, 2002
By Phil Kabler
STAFF WRITER
If West Virginia colleges and universities can't control ever-rising tuition rates, the
Legislature may step in
and do it for them, the House of Delegates education chairman warned Sunday.
Upset with tuition increases of up to 13 percent approved this spring, Delegate Jerry
Mezzatesta,
D-Hampshire, threatened to require legislative approval for any future hikes.
"We need to go back in and say, what are we doing to our citizens?" said Mezzatesta,
who likened
tuition increases at state institutions to tax increases.
J. Michael Mullen, chancellor for the state Higher Education Policy Commission, said
after Sunday's
meeting of the Legislative Oversight Commission on Education Accountability that
there are a number of
reasons for the tuition increases.
He said the schools had to offset part of a 3 percent funding cut imposed statewide
by Gov. Bob Wise,
had a 12 percent increase in employer's contributions for health insurance, and
received insurance
premium increases from the state Board of Risk and Insurance Management.
"Unlike a standard state agency, on our campuses, 40 percent of the operating
budgets are from nonstate
funds," Mullen said.
He said tuition on state campuses went up less than the 18 percent average increase
nationally.
Also Sunday, Mezzatesta discussed possible legislation to get the bugs out of the
new Promise
scholarship program.
He said a major problem in Promise's first year is the lack of a uniform grading system
statewide. Some
counties, for example, weight grades for advanced classes while others don't.
"A kid who takes tough classes could get a C, but in the adjacent county, that would
be a B," Mezzatesta
said. Promise scholarships require a minimum 3.0 grade point average.
Mezzatesta said the program should also adopt a sliding scale, so that students with
less than a 3.0
average but exceptional scores on the ACT or SAT could also qualify.
Promise Executive Director Robert Morgenstern agreed that the different grading
scales have been a
headache, but said the issue should be addressed by the state Board of Education or
by local school
boards, not the Promise board.
"The lack of a uniform grading system across the state, along with weighted grades,
is probably the most
difficult problem we've dealt with," he told the committee.
Promise scholarships have been awarded to 3,861 students, while another 1,923
applicants were
rejected. The most common reason for ineligibility was failure to make the minimum
required score on
the ACT or SAT test, which wiped out 1,246 applicants.
Mullen said 1,142 students qualified for both the Promise scholarship and the
need-based state Higher
Education Grant Program.
For the 2002-03 school year, the state awarded 11,130 need-based grants for a total
of $22.3 million. In
1992, the numbers were 5,040 grants for $5.8 million.
Lottery profits pay for the $10 million cost of Promise scholarships and $18 million of
the needs-based
grants.
| 
