Public Universities Should Serve Citizens—The In-State Enrollment Act Enforces It

An extraordinary number of public state universities now admit a majority of their students from out of state. At the University of Vermont, the number is 75 percent. At the University of Delaware, the number is 66 percent. Other universities with a majority of out-of-state students include North Dakota State University (65%), the University of Alabama (63%), University of Maryland, University College (62%), University of Rhode Island (59%), University of New Hampshire (58%), University of Mississippi (57%), and University of Arkansas (50%). The number of public universities with at least one-third of their students from out-of-state is staggeringly larger.

Public universities increasingly have abandoned their mission to serve the citizens of their states. Partly, they do so because they can recruit students from other states for their athletic teams and orchestras. Partly, they do so because increasing portions of their tuition revenue come from out-of-state students: in-state students usually get substantial tuition discounts, but out-of-state and foreign students don’t. Public universities can now make a profit even if they don’t educate their own citizens well enough to get into college.

Public universities mostly ought to serve their own citizens. That’s why they were founded, and it’s why taxpayers fund them. When public universities mostly cater to out-of-state or foreign students, they provide education best suited for their new customer base—and not education tailored to benefit in-state students or to follow state policymakers’ priorities. Worst of all, public universities that no longer depend on their own state’s citizens for enrollment have no incentive to reform the state’s K-12 education, either by educating teachers properly or by applying political pressure on K-12 schools to improve their education. Public universities with large out-of-state enrollments don’t need properly educated in-state K-12 students to fill their classes. Effective K-12 education reform requires state policymakers to ensure that their public university systems rededicate themselves to educating the citizens of their state.

That’s why the National Association of Scholars (NAS) and the Civics Alliance have drafted a model legislation, the In-State Enrollment Act. We’ve used the North Carolina Board of Governors’ Policy on Nonresident Undergraduate Enrollment to provide a simple and effective template for our model Act. North Carolina’s Policy caps out-of-state enrollment for entering freshmen at 18 percent for each public university campus. This policy already works well in North Carolina, and 18 percent seems an entirely reasonable cap for out-of-state enrollment for public universities. It allows universities to attract a significant number of students from beyond the state, but to ensure that, with five of six students from within the state, the public university system’s focus remains the education of the children of the state’s taxpaying citizens.

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Our model Act provides sanctions for universities that disobey this law: for every out-of-state student accepted above the cap, the university loses twice as much state money as the tuition it receives from that student. We think there should be some effective financial sanctions against scofflaw universities, but state policymakers will want to choose an appropriate financial sanction to suit their state. We urge state policymakers to regard our suggestion for a financial sanction as a rough draft for them to emend.

The model In-State Enrollment Act naturally complements Section E [“Citizen Priority”] and Section F [“Sanctuary Campus Prohibition”] of our model College Finances Act. These two sections limit tuition and student enrollment from foreign sources, limit eligibility for special admissions categories to state residents, and prohibit “sanctuary campuses” that protect, employ, and enroll illegal aliens. But while these might be natural complements to the In-State Enrollment Act, they are not the same issue. Policymakers may choose to join these different pieces of model legislation, but we prefer to present this model Act with a simple focus on out-of-state enrollment caps, so as not to muddle its rationale.

Our model Act turns on the definition of residency status for tuition purposes—if you’re going to provide a cap on out-of-state students, you need to define what an in-state student is. Many states define residency status as legal residence for 12 months or more by the student and his family. State policymakers should make sure that they approve of their state’s definition of residency status for tuition purposes. One reform might be to confine residency status to U.S. citizens and legal residents, and not to illegal aliens, even if they have benefited from programs such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). State policymakers will decide what is appropriate, but they should be sure to take the time to define residency status carefully and not simply assume the status quo benefits their state.

Public universities ought primarily to benefit state taxpayers and their children. State policymakers can swiftly build on our model In-State Enrollment Act to craft education reform legislation tailored to their own state’s public universities.

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Image: “NDSU Campus Welcome” by Brianna.glaus on Wikimedia Commons