State intergovernmental management paper

Due to budget problems, they eliminate a number of programs  at the public universities in your state. One result is that certain specific majors are no longer available at any of those universities. Each of the  majors  offered, though, at a state university in a neighboring state. Conversely, your state’s institutions offer certain majors not available in that other state. An analyst in the state’s higher education department has advocated that an agreement be entered with the neighboring state. To allow reciprocity on in-state tuition for those programs. The executive director of the department is enthusiastic. And wants to expand the concept to an interstate compact covering other areas of mutual interest. The speaker of the state house of representatives. However, has already stated her opposition to any such arrangements.

You are a member of the staff of the governor’s office and will be serving as an analyst on this issue. As a first step in your analysis, you will be listening to the other parties’ comments about the problem and the proposed solutions, if any. After hearing their perspectives, you will need to address various questions posed by the governor.The budget cuts the state has imposed for the coming year are draconian! Not only are students going to pay higher tuition, many majors are being eliminated. Some of those students can switch to another university here in the state to finish a program. But in many instances, the majors have been eliminated from all of our schools.

Further Description

And unless we take some action, if those students go to a local university in our neighboring county. They’ll have to pay out of school tuition. I say that our department enters into an agreement with our counterpart in that other state. To allow students to attend at in-state rates if a program is not offered in the home state of the student. It would be a simple agreement for reciprocity on the fees. Trying to assure appropriate access to higher education for the citizens of this country is the goal of our department. And I like the idea of using some type of agreement with our neighboring state to try to alleviate this immediate problem.

Yet I think we need to set our sights higher. We should explore entering an agreement with that state that covers any and all cross-border higher educational issues that we can presently envision. Look at the New England Board of Higher Education, for example, and all the good that has come from that compact for several decades. Not to mention the Midwestern Higher Education Compact. Let’s see what all we might be able to accomplish with such an agreement. While it sorrows me to agree to the cuts to higher education funding, we’ve really had no choice the past few years. And it concerns me that the legislative efforts at controlling the costs may be circumvented by some attempt at our higher education department to propose an agreement with another state to waive the out-of-state rates in many instances.

In Summary

Some of our popular programs generate revenues for our institutions because of the high proportion of out of  students. We should not forgo that revenue stream. Besides, any compact would have to be approved by our house and senate as well as our counterparts in that state.You need to draft an analysis and recommendation to the governor. At this point, the governor is looking for your opinion. Legal counsel will be consulted if needed on the finer points that you may raise

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