Editorial: Higher ed plan badly flawed

Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2007 | 7:22 a.m.

Students at Nevada colleges and universities would be the losers under a plan to increase full-time enrollment in order to get more state aid.

A Nevada System of Higher Education committee is proposing the plan, which is scheduled for discussion in February by the Board of Regents.

State aid to colleges and universities is based on enrollment, and that aid is higher for full-time students, or those taking 15 or more credits per semester.

So the committee is proposing to penalize students taking 12 credits. Under its plan, those students would be charged for 15 credits anyway, in the hope they would take an extra three-credit course and thereby deliver the maximum in state aid.

Also, out of a desire to move students through the system more quickly, 18 credits would be offered for the price of 15. Students taking nine credits or fewer per semester would not be affected.

Both aspects of the plan would render a disservice to Nevada's students. The plan would even be at cross purposes with the state's Millennium Scholarship, which pays a portion of each credit up to 12.

Because many of Nevada's higher-education students are putting themselves through college, working full- and part-time jobs to do so, they can take only as many credits as are subsidized by the state scholarship.

Forcing them to pay for three extra credit hours would greatly diminish the scholarship and could force them to take only nine credits, slowing their educational progress and achieving the opposite of what the state is trying to accomplish.

Nevada's colleges and universities are attended by many nontraditional students whose schedules do not permit a 15-credit workload. They should not be pressured to take more courses than they can successfully complete. The same goes for students who are comfortable at 15 credits but would be overburdened by 18.

The Board of Regents has an obligation to listen as this plan is presented. But we hope it decides that pressuring students to make bad decisions is not the way to increase state aid.