John W. Garland: Ohio should be clamoring to support Central State OCTOBER 8, 2006 (wcsu) - In her Sept. 17 column, "As tuition costs rise, Ohio's prospects fall," Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Chris Sheridan told Dayton Daily News readers that "... a governor committed to the state's best interests would have to consider closing CSU, despite the certain political backlash."

I trust Ohio's political leadership would base a decision of that import on much more than Sheridan's facile analysis.

She cites the 2004 cost per-student at Central State and our graduation rate as the basis for her recommendation. The trouble is, those numbers don't tell the whole story. Both statistics are directly related to the financial support the state provides us, our mission and the demographics of our students.

Central State's average cost per-student in 2004 actually was $13,916, not $16,572. According the Ohio Board of Regents, Central State demonstrated the largest percentage decline 43 percent in cost per-student of any state institution during the previous five years.

That was to be expected; cost per-student is a function of enrollment, and ours has grown significantly recently.

Graduation rates aren't only measure of success

Graduation rates ought not be the primary measure of any university's effectiveness, but this is especially true for Central State. These rates assume that a student should finish school within six years at the same institution where he or she started. But many students transfer; they drop out to earn money, to care for a young child or an ailing parent. Many do eventually graduate. There are many success stories who began at Central State.

Graduation rates also are sadly and indisputably tied to income. The higher your family income, the more likely you will graduate within six years. Notwithstanding that many Central State students are low-income, our gradation rate has significantly improved since 2004.

Sheridan argues that it's in Ohio's interest to focus on students pursuing doctorates, and to increase the state's support for university research. There are loser schools, she says, and these should be closed, and there are winners, which should be encouraged to flourish. This Darwinian, zero-sum strategy would eventually leave all Ohioans in the losing column.

This approach, for example, would hold no one accountable for Ohio's abysmal support for higher education; it would deny opportunities to those who need the doors opened the most; and it would reward those for whom the doors are already open.

State has been tight-fisted with CSU

Central State University, the state's only public historically black college, began receiving direct state support in 1887. Since then, nine other four-year public universities began receiving state money.

The fact that despite our long history, we are today the smallest of Ohio's 13 four-year public institutions is not a position we sought. Rather, our size and cost per-student is a reflection of the state's tight-fisted, neglectful and discriminatory treatment.

If you have two children and you feed one less than half of what you feed the other, it is not rocket science to expect one to be smaller, weaker and less attractive. Your neighbors might consider your actions immoral and illegal. But if they were like Central State's critics, they might just blame the victim.

In 1981, the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights found Ohio in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for "maintaining Central State University as an institution for blacks" and dissuading white students from attending.

According to the civil rights office, Ohio had not only failed to provide Central State with the programs, facilities and funding to compete equally with Ohio's other four-year institutions; it had also established a new university not far from Central State and given it the resources it needed to grow and prosper, at Central State's expense.

The stark reality is that as Ohio included more institutions into its family of colleges, vital support has been withheld from Central State. A tour of our academic offerings and facilities will confirm this assertion.

In 1998, after decades of foot-dragging, the state entered into an agreement with the federal government in which it promised to make Central State as attractive as our sister institutions. Ohio has yet to live up to that commitment. It, in fact, has cut funding to Central State by 17.5 percent since 2001. In 2005, we received the largest percentage cut of any public four-year institution in Ohio and in the nation.

Low-income students need opportunities, too

Central State University has an important role to play. We are one of Ohio's three public universities especially designed to offer opportunities to low-income students and demographic groups who aren't attending college in large numbers.

It's important to note that between 1994-1997, Central State awarded 19 percent of all bachelor's degrees that were received by black, non-Hispanic students in the entire state. We awarded 22 percent of all bachelor's degrees received by male black, non-Hispanic students during this time.

Ohio says it wants to have 180,000 new graduates by 2015. The only way to meet this goal is to increase graduation rates for low- and moderate-income students.

If we want to be competitive in the global market, we must bring into the higher education community people who have been absent or underrepresented. At Central State, 80 percent of our students come from households that earn less than $50,000 a year, and 50 percent of the freshman class in 2005 came from families earning less than $30,000.

Those are numbers we are proud of and Ohio should be clamoring to support us.

Our critics do a great disservice when they dismiss an institution that has served Ohio so well for so long. Let us hope the next governor understands that it is in Ohio's best interest to ensure a strong and viable Central State University.


John W. Garland is president of Central State University.
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