Indiana lawmakers on Tuesday considered the results of a “first-of-its-kind” request for higher education spending and debt data and found it lacking.
The data was riddled with holes and littered with limitations, with institutions unable to submit desired data in the correct format or within the narrow time frames allowed.
“I don’t think we have the data to say anything at this point,” Rep. Jeff Thompson (R-Riston) said during a single meeting of the Interim Review Committee on Fiscal Policy on Tuesday. He is the Vice-Chairman.
The nonpartisan agency tasked with conducting the analysis said policymakers should reconsider the request and allocate more time to data collection.
Lawmakers also criticized the university for refusing to present to the committee, noting that university representatives were listening silently from the back row of the room.
Student loan debt reduced
The interim committee asked more than six public higher education institutions about their student loan debt, alumni salaries, staff salaries, and program delivery costs.
The company made its initial request in August, giving institutions, including multiple campuses at Ivy Tech Community College, Ball State University and Purdue University, six weeks to hand over their data by mid-September. I was given a reprieve. But Austin Spears, a fiscal analyst with the Indiana Department of Legislative Services, told lawmakers that they continued to work on some elements until Monday night.
Spears has warned multiple times that agencies often define and record indicators differently, complicating his agency’s attempts to compare data across agencies. Small program sizes at certain degree levels also mean sample sizes are small and unstable, he said.
Need to contact us?
Have a news tip?
Still, officials found that even without accounting for inflation, the average Hoosier higher education student will have less debt in 2022 compared to 10 years ago.
Students who earned short-term certificates from Ivy Tech in 2012 had an average of more than $8,000 in debt, while 2022 graduates averaged less than $1,000 in debt, according to Spears’ slides. Vincennes University reported that loan debt decreased from about $11,000 to $8,000 during that period.
Students who earned long-term certificates and associate degrees in 2022 also had less debt on average compared to 2012, in dollars not adjusted for inflation, except at Ball State University.
Spears noted that while the decrease in loan debt was smaller for bachelor’s degrees, it was “mixed” for master’s and doctoral degrees.
Student costs and staff pay disparity
The Legislature also looked at how much it costs students to earn various degrees and charted each institution’s most and least expensive programs. However, there was a caveat to this information.
The rise and fall of strange amounts, such as a $40,000 short-term certification in multimedia design at Indiana University’s local campus, led Spears to warn of a possible “data problem.”
Ball State University was excluded because it could not provide the required data, and Vincennes University could only provide partial information.
Rep. Ed Delaney (D-Indianapolis) also said the reported costs are a “sticker price.”
After receiving the scholarship, he said, “It’s not an amount that everyone would pay.”
What students and their families are actually owed is a “substantive issue,” Delaney said.
The Legislature also collected data showing a wide disparity between faculty who work with students (excluding part-time educators) and administrators.
Spears said this is important because some institutions convert faculty salaries into full-time salaries differently, and the calculation may or may not include other benefits. He said formatting the information was also difficult.
A school responds to a recruitment request for a member of parliament.
Seven agencies submitted briefs detailing the data, but only one was submitted to Tuesday’s committee meeting, prompting criticism from some lawmakers.
Mary Jane Michalak, vice president of legal and public relations at Ivy Tech, told lawmakers that community colleges are working hard to reduce costs, not just tuition and fees.
“This is a significant cost to students, and those costs are not transparent when students register for classes,” Michalak said. She cited research showing that students who can’t afford study materials often don’t have them.
After years of planning, Ivy Tech negotiated a price for course materials, and the school’s next rate was set at $17 per credit hour. Last year, even at a slightly higher rate, the program saved students nearly $74 million.
Only 123 eligible students did not participate in the initiative, Michalak said.
He said Ivy Tech has also stopped including loans by default in student financial aid packages and sends students letters each year showing how much debt they already have. He said student loan borrowing is decreasing.
Lawmakers thanked her for her presentation and directed some mild anger at those who didn’t present.
“Offers were made to all the colleges, but Ivy Tech was the only one that took you,” said Rep. Cherish Pryor (D-Indianapolis).
“That’s true. But there are some people sitting in the rows behind that,” said Travis Holdman, chairman of the Markle Republican Party. However, he noted that all had submitted testimony.
“I appreciate the cover you provided. But I go back to, ‘That could have been better,'” Pryor said. “…Especially because so much money comes out of the Indiana General Assembly. And it’s our responsibility to be good stewards of our nation’s money, and eight minutes is not much time to ask them to present on our behalf.” Not a lot of time.”
The committee initially had no recommendations, but Sen. Fadi Kadoura, D-Indianapolis, said it could harm the bodies.
Delaney advocated for an immediate update of the analysis with complete data, adding that if lawmakers tried to compare the current effort with an update two years from now, there would be no comparison.
“Let’s get the job done,” he said.
The committee adopted a recommendation to convene stakeholders to determine the parameters for data collection and hopefully have that data available by the time it meets again next spring.
Get the morning headlines delivered to your inbox
