Going to college …

What Maine has found in the 2- years since the Finance Authority of Maine released its first study on why high school graduates here do not go on to college is that the question is more complicated than it first appears and single answers are invariably wrong. As FAME’s follow-up study, released last week, suggests, changing the cultural and economic factors that affect Maine’s college rate is going to take a long time.

Maine’s low college-entrance level is a puzzle for several reasons. Its high schools not only have very high graduation rates but Maine high school students do exceptionally well on national tests. New England, further, has a well-established tradition of supporting higher education, and the region’s other five states have markedly higher college rates. Maine, however, ranks in the bottom third of states for students going on to two- or four-year colleges.

David Silvernail, a professor of educational research at the University of Southern Maine, not long ago offered in the Maine Policy Review some tentative ideas about this problem. First, he said, factors in Maine that influence college decisions make it unlike the rest of New England and more like states such as Idaho, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and Wyoming. All of those states, by the way, have higher participation rates than Maine. Second, Maine’s tuitions are relatively high compared with those states. Third, students in Maine have relatively low access at the two-year level. And fourth, Dr. Silvernail points out, Maine, unfortunately, is not well-known nationally for the reputation of its public university programs.

The good news is that Maine has recognized it has a problem and is doing something – several things – about it. The state starts with the advantage of having two highly skilled leaders in John Fitzsimmons, president of the Maine Technical College System, and University of Maine System Chancellor Terry MacTaggart. It has support from the Legislature and the governor. And it has a motive – the growing wage gap between college-educated and non-college-educated workers. During the recently ended legislative session higher education was supported through increased dollars to institutions, more for R&D and expanded scholarship funding. That’s a good start.

The FAME study, conducted by Market Decisions and supported by Fleet Edu-cation Finance, suggests that students and their parents understand that college presents important opportunities and expect to take advantage of them. Not surprisingly, cost is a big factor in their decisions, although it was reported as less an impediment than in the ’96 survey. A disturbing statistic, repeated from the earlier work, was the comparatively few parents who were aware of the range of funding options. In fact, only 29 percent of parents and 15 percent of students were very familiar with FAME itself.

The FAME survey presents a benchmark for how far Maine must go to raise its college-entrance rates above the national average and reap the benefits, financial and civic, that these institutions provide. It offers valuable direction on what is certain to be a long journey.