Tuition freeze leaves many Md. students out in the cold

There are probably people who are very happy that Towson University looks harder to get into these days than nearby Goucher College, but I doubt they include the 6,928 applicants whom Towson rejected for its 2009 freshman class.

Not long ago it was "Towson State" and letting in nearly three of every four applicants. Now it is attracting more kids from New York and New Jersey and admitting only 56 percent overall.

This fall's admission rate for the private Goucher, which describes itself as "selective," was 72 percent. (Goucher's freshmen did achieve higher SAT scores, on average.)

Give credit to Towson's excellent education and affordable tuition, plus the recession, which makes it harder for families to afford private schools such as Goucher.

But there's a problem.

In an economy where higher education is more important than ever, barring thousands of qualified kids from places such as Towson is bad for them, bad for employers and bad for Maryland.

It's time to stop rationing Maryland education. Gov. Martin O'Malley's three-year tuition freeze, intended to make college more accessible, is starting to have the opposite effect. He should let universities modestly raise prices so they have the resources to admit those who are getting shut out.

Towson, Morgan State University in Baltimore and Salisbury University on the Eastern Shore were never intended to become elite institutions.

They and their sister state schools were supposed to educate the kids who didn't get into the University of Maryland, College Park. But to a greater and greater extent, they're not able to do that. Even as interest in these schools soared, the tuition freeze and tight state budgets forced them to put a lid on admissions.

This year, Towson admitted almost 1,000 fewer freshmen and enrolled 400 fewer than it did last year. That's even though applications hit 15,623 this year, up from 11,750 in 2005.

"We actually pulled back from accepting additional applications," said Brian P. Hazlett, the university's director of admissions. "We didn't want to accept applications from students we didn't have the ability to enroll."

This year, Salisbury accepted 54 percent of its applicants, a spokesman said. That's up from a 53 percent acceptance rate last year, but the long-term trend has been toward more exclusivity. Morgan State accepted only 32 percent of applicants this year, down from 43 percent last year, its spokesman said.

Meanwhile, there's a pileup at community colleges. They're jammed with people who didn't get into Towson, Morgan or Salisbury, as well as with folks who lost jobs and are trying to upgrade their skills.

Enrollment at Howard Community College is up 11 percent to 8,778, said spokeswoman Nancy Gainer.

At the Community College of Baltimore County, enrollment hit 24,163 this fall, up 16 percent from last year and the highest it has been since the severe recession of 1991.

"We all began to look toward some kind of boom enrollment" last summer, said CCBC President Sandra Kurtinitis, "but we ended up with far more students than even we thought. We're looking at thousands more students walking our hallways, sitting in our classrooms, parking their cars, trying to buy hot dogs."

Community colleges are critical for Maryland's education arsenal. But they're no substitute for four-year colleges. A 5 percent tuition increase would let universities replace money they've lost to budget cuts and hire the professors they need to admit more applicants and fulfill their mission.

O'Malley is justly proud of his tuition freeze. Since he became governor, Maryland went from having the eighth-highest public university costs in the country to having the 16th-highest. When this year's figures come out, it'll probably rank even better.

But the freeze has become counterproductive. If the object of Maryland's university system is to make as many young people as possible as smart and relevant as they can be for employers, it's not doing the job. Better to have annual tuition and fees go up $400 per kid than deny or delay a future for thousands of young adults.

The Board of Regents can take some of the money and spend it on financial aid for students who can't afford the bump.

"The governor has always understood that the tuition freeze couldn't be in place forever, but it has worked over the last three years to make college more affordable in Maryland," said O'Malley spokesman Rick Abbruzzese.

I asked him if tuition would finally go up.

"For the next school year, I think it is possible," he said, although he added that any increase must be "responsible" and less than a double-digit percentage.

Good. It would be even better if it rose for the spring 2010 semester.

Selling an affordable product doesn't do any good if you ban customers from the store.