Like any other industry, higher education has its haves and its have-nots. Regional colleges are often falling on the have-not side, loosely defined as four-year public schools that aren’t flagship or research institutions. Though regional colleges outnumber their flagship counterparts, they generally serve higher shares of disadvantaged students while receiving less state and federal support. A new report from the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, argues this should change. Its authors developed a proposal for regional schools, specifically in economically challenged areas.
The report identifies more than 140 four-year institutions in the U.S. and Puerto Rico as candidates for funding. They say the federal government could designate these colleges as “distressed-community-serving institutions” and give them grants worth between $25 million and $50 million, paid out over five years. With the grant money, these schools could invest in digital infrastructure, such as broadband. They could “improve university and community capacity to address regional public health or economic challenges,” the report states. Or they could help scale up business development. Higher Ed Dive talked with one of the report’s authors, Robert Maxim, a senior research associate at Brookings, about his vision for the proposal, the barriers still facing regional colleges, and how to sell the idea of new federal support to policymakers.
Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
HIGHER ED DIVE: How was this idea of federal assistance for regional colleges born?
ROBERT MAXIM: We’ve looked at this idea of distressed communities for several years. Our view as individual scholars is that the last two to three economic recoveries have been spatially unequal. There’s a lot of discussion about interpersonal inequality — the pull away of the superrich from the middle class. But spatial inequality is essential — the power out of the wealthiest, most successful areas from the rest of the country. Think of your San Francisco, Seattle, and Boston, particularly the tech industry-driven metro areas.
So there was a lot of research about the effect of research universities in creating new tech hubs across the U.S., how anchor institutions can develop regional cluster strategies, and things like that. We, as a team, were unsatisfied with the discussion ending there. Our view was there was a gap in the literature about regional public universities.
There was a fair amount of conversation around community colleges, too. And at least within the Democratic party, there was a growing consensus that these institutions should have an unquestioned level of federal baseline support. But we saw a gap, and that was those smaller four-year schools. There was a research gap, and the policy environment hadn’t caught up.
There are way more regional public universities in the U.S. than bigger R-1s. We believe they are outstanding anchor institutions to route federal investment. They are a set of institutions that have been historically neglected and deserve more attention and support from the federal government.
These institutions are worthy of study and could be a powerful vehicle for supporting distressed places.
Why haven’t these colleges gotten as much attention?
They’re just not as high-profile as other schools. That can be a problem regarding garnering public support for more investment. They tend to have smaller federal and state policy outreach budgets than flagship and research institutions.
Higher education has also been used to balance state budgets. Many states have constitutionally mandated investments that they need to make, K-12 being a big one. In periods of disinvestment, higher ed ends up being the thing that gets cut, and then it becomes not much of a priority for states. The schools that suffer the most from state disinvestment are the regional public because they don’t have the resources to jack up tuition or attract many foreign or out-of-state students.
There’s also a bit of a bias in policy organizations themselves. There’s underrepresentation in policy groups and think tanks, those crafting higher education policy, who went to regional public universities. Many of them tend to recruit from elite or expensive private schools.
And there’s a vein of anti-higher education sentiment in U.S. politics. I’m not talking about outright malice. However, when policymakers consider what to prioritize on a state or federal budget level, higher ed institutions and regional schools tend to fall by the wayside.
Did the pandemic draw attention to the benefits of these types of schools or highlight their financial weaknesses?
It drew attention to them, but I also think it created an unfair narrative that these schools are in a financial crisis. People were asking, “Are they going to go extinct? If so, what’s the point of having them?”
That’s a harmful narrative. There was a bit of over-rotation where people thought more universities would go under than did. And there was some conflation of less high-profile public universities with small private liberal arts colleges, painting them all with a broad brush that they would close. But these are universities with totally different financial situations because they’re public.
There are positive benefits because more articles are being written about them now. People know about them, and I think more research will go into them. The downside is that the one narrative that made it into the general public and policy sphere was these schools were all in crisis, and that’s not true. Some are facing severe financial challenges, but others are doing fine. We try to make that distinction in our piece. A school that is in a distressed community may not be distressed financially.
A logical leap is that some of these schools are in dire financial condition and must close because of mismanagement. To me, it’s more that these schools are not doing well financially, largely because of state funding decisions or tuition and enrollment mandates.
What would the effect be on a community if these schools were to consolidate or close?
Place-bound students who need to go back to school would be most affected. Their primary source of affordable postsecondary education would be closing.
There will be fewer 18- to 22-year-olds every year for a while, and it will take time for the sector to recover. The only way you get more of the workforce to have a postsecondary credential is for adult learners to return to school.
The area may have community colleges, but they mostly only offer two-year degrees. Private colleges are also just more expensive. Also, underrepresented students, typically students of color and lower-income students, tend to attend regional public universities disproportionately. These groups are on the margins of higher education, to begin with.
That’s not even about the economic effects, the job losses when you have such an anchor institution closing. Many places saw this with manufacturing and coal declines when they were the largest employers in an area and closed. I imagine the magnitude would be similar if you outright close a campus.
What kind of initiatives do you envision the federal grants benefiting?
Closing the broadband divide is a huge one. It’s not just laying fiber in rural areas. The broadband discussion has been disproportionately focused on rural areas that don’t have access to the internet whatsoever. And we indeed need to service them. At the same time, many urban-located families in the U.S. find the internet unaffordable or inaccessible. Where public mission is critical, these schools can help find affordable ways to expand internet access for families and students and be actors in the community.
Another is improving local school districts. When you talk about factors that lead to economic distress, I believe that they emerge early in life due to a lack of opportunities individuals have. The effects of lower-quality school districts ripple throughout students’ entire lives.
An educated and productive local human capital stock starts with pre-K and K-12 investment.
The third is trying to capture the benefits of agglomeration. Many places offer massive economic development subsidies for companies to move there. If you create a cluster there, it tends to have robust economic effects if you do it right. It doesn’t always get done right. Regional public universities can be essential incubators and entrepreneurship-support organizations.
How do you sell the idea of federal support for regionals to policymakers?
When I talk to policymakers, I emphasize the broad presence of these schools. We did the math, and it’s like, 34 states, nearly 100 congressional districts have at least one of these schools. And that’s just the distressed community-serving institutions we identified. I hope policymakers looking to do what is best for the economic community development of the places they represent would recognize that these are an asset.
Just emphasizing also that this is nonpartisan can help. Economic and community development is the bread and butter of what Congress or state policymakers set out to do.
Distressed communities aren’t going away anytime soon. If Congress chooses not to invest, this will remain a relevant issue for a while and move forward. We’re hoping that something gets done sooner rather than later, but we also are realistic and doing this as a bit of a long game.
