DETROIT – It is “fundamentally wrong” that the state pays substantially more to house prisoners than it does to educate college students, executives with Business Leaders for Michigan said Wednesday, and said the state is more to blame for higher tuition costs because of the cuts it has made to higher education funding.

It is vital to the state’s economic development that more students go to college and that the state maintain top-flight universities, the executives said. And in another 10 years the state needs to see another 1 million college graduates to help with the economy, they said.

Patrick Doyle, president and CEO of Domino’s said the state’s universities had done a good job of controlling costs overall.

And while there have been complaints about the higher cost of tuition, most the blame for that should go to the state for cutting back on its funding to the state’s 15 four-year schools, he said. The state has cut some $1 billion in funding to the universities over the last decade, and that in total has accounted for more than what the tuition increases have raised.

Despite the increases in tuition, Glenn Mroz, president of Michigan Technological University and chair of the Presidents’ Council of State Universities of Michigan, said there are some 20 percent more students in Michigan universities.

Doug Rothwell, president of the BLM, said the group applauded the basic thrust of Governor Rick Snyder’s budget proposal to increase spending on the schools but tie the increase to performance on certain metrics. However, those metrics should be tied to how Michigan universities do fared with universities in other states and not against themselves, Rothwell said.

He also said the state needs to do more to attract students from outside Michigan, both to help boost revenues for the schools and to draw in new talent that might want to stay in the state.

Because the state spends some $2 billion on corrections and $1.2 billion on higher education, Phil Power, former newspaper publisher and head of the Center for Michigan, said it leaves the impression the state considers it more important to warehouse prisoners than it does to educate college students.

But “employers want people with college degrees,” he said.

Getting the state to spend more money on universities will have to occur over time, Doyle said, and while the state has had a goal of controlling costs “at some point you have to reinvest in what has the greatest importance.” Higher education should be high on that list and he said convincing officials that it would have a major positive effect on economic development should help push support for more money for the schools.

This story was provided by Gongwer News Service. To subscribe, click on Gongwer.Com

href=”http://www.gongwer.com” target=”_blank”>Gongwer.Com

a>>