When he’s out talking to constituents about what needs to change in Maryland, State Sen. James Brochin will most likely bring up the Joseph A. Sellinger State Aid Program—a public student-aid fund, much lauded by the private colleges that benefit from it.
Its annual largess has dwindled from $56-million to $38-million in recent years. But that’s not what’s wrong, from his point of view. Mr. Brochin, a Democrat from suburban Baltimore, would like to see the Sellinger program disappear almost entirely. He is Maryland’s most strident opponent of the program, which gets support from both Republicans and Democrats. He raises his objections in the legislature, on talk radio, and even with unlikely audiences.
“He will talk to the bankers’ association and talk about Sellinger,” says Tina M. Bjarekull, president of the Maryland Independent College and University Association. “It has become this thorn in his side.”
The senator’s position is all the more unusual given that one of the state’s major private colleges, Goucher College, is in his district. While his position seems to resonate with fiscal conservatives who harbor skepticism about stereotypically cushy private colleges, it has also earned him the enmity of Goucher’s president, Sanford J. Ungar, and may have cost the senator some much-needed political support this election year.
“He despises me on this issue—absolutely hates me,” Mr. Brochin says. “We send each other hate letters.” Mr. Ungar brings students to the State House every year, “and we debate this, and we have each gotten nowhere.”
For Mr. Brochin, the issue seems rather straightforward: The state is facing fiscal problems, so it should not be doling out money to private institutions. He raises as an example his daughter’s enrollment at a private school in Baltimore: “That’s my choice. I shouldn’t get money from the state for that.” (Mr. Brochin himself graduated from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1986 and earned a master’s degree in government and politics from the University of Maryland at College Park in 1990.)
At the very least, he says, the fund’s formula should be turned on its head: Give less money to places like the Johns Hopkins University and more to needy institutions like Sojourner-Douglass College, a small, private institution that serves poor African-American students.
But get him talking about the Sellinger program, and he summons up more outrage: Two-thirds of the Sellinger money, he claims, goes to Hopkins, which already has a $2.5-billion endowment. He also makes much of the fact that some of the Sellinger money goes to out-of-state students, so that those from, say, Illinois can attend Goucher or other Maryland colleges on Maryland taxpayers’ money.
And that’s where Mr. Brochin clashes with people at colleges like Goucher—and with reality, says Mr. Ungar. “He’s hallucinating,” the college’s president says. “He’s making it up, as he does with much of what he says regarding the Sellinger formula.”
Two-thirds of the money goes to Johns Hopkins? It’s more like 40 percent; money in the program is distributed according to student population, and Hopkins has by far the most students. Asked about the discrepancy, Mr. Brochin responds that whether the amount is two-thirds or just over one-third, it’s still a big chunk of state money going to a wealthy university.
An Important Infusion
Actually, the state is getting a bargain on private-college education, Ms. Bjarekull says. While Maryland puts 4 percent of its higher-education appropriations into private colleges, they turn out more than 30 percent of the state’s graduates.
As for Mr. Brochin’s point about out-of-state students, Ms. Bjarekull says the state’s colleges are committed to giving at least 75 percent of the money to Marylanders—in fact, 82 percent goes to in-state students. Institutions like Loyola University Maryland and St. John’s College, in Annapolis, give all or almost all of their Sellinger money to in-state students. And even if out-of-state students get some of the money to attend Maryland colleges, Sellinger advocates have argued, that young brainpower is good for Maryland—and the students may well stay in state to become productive citizens and taxpayers.
Although money from the Sellinger fund is a relatively small part of the private colleges’ budgets—$1.6-million for Goucher and $4.4-million for Loyola, for example, in the 2011 appropriation—administrators say the fund offers an important infusion at the margins. Terrence M. Sawyer, vice president for administration at Loyola, says that without it, the university would have to reconsider policies like its need-blind admissions.
The fund was started by the state in 1973, after four private institutions in Maryland closed in that era’s financial downturn. (The University of Baltimore was absorbed by the state system.) Named for the Rev. Joseph A. Sellinger, president of Loyola from 1964 to 1993, the fund was seen as a way to help buoy private institutions, maintaining a diversity of educational choice in the state.
But in the recent economic downturn, student-aid programs have been targets in many states looking to cut costs, and the Sellinger fund is no different. Late last year and through the spring, private colleges in the state rallied to minimize damage to the fund after Gov. Martin O’Malley, a Democrat, proposed cutting it by $9-million. (That cut was later reduced to $7-million.)
“It has been on the governor’s hit list,” Mr. Brochin says. Killing off Sellinger “depends on what happens with the economy. If the recession continues and we need to dig deeper, then there is a chance.”
Cut It Now, but Bring It Back
A majority of other voices in the state, however, don’t see it that way. In a state that spends more than $1-billion on higher education, the Sellinger program is a small amount to quibble over, advocates say. An editorial in The Sun, of Baltimore, late last year argued that while the program should be cut now, to get through the state’s budget woes, “after the recession, the aid should be a centerpiece of our economic-development agenda.”
Jamie Raskin, a Democratic state senator who is also a professor of law at American University, says he initially had questions about the Sellinger fund but has since been satisfied about how the money is distributed. Susan L.M. Aumann, a Republican state delegate in Mr. Brochin’s district, says she strongly supports the Sellinger program and cannot understand why he would not.
Kevin Carney, the Republican running for Mr. Brochin’s seat this fall, calls himself a strict fiscal conservative but says the most he would do to the Sellinger program is freeze the amount it receives. “I recognize that it is a burden on the taxpayer, but in the order of priorities, I believe it is important,” he says. “Clearly, Goucher is a constituency that is important to me.”
That last bit is no small matter in a local election, where even a small college can wield considerable power. Mr. Brochin may feel it this fall. In the past, Goucher officials say, he has asked and been allowed to film political ads on the campus. But he will not be welcome to do so this year.
Mr. Brochin had also hoped to get the support of the Goucher Democrats, a student club, in his campaign. But Dennis R. Teegardin, president of the club, is a Sellinger recipient who has lobbied for the program in the capital and even participated in the State House debates between Mr. Ungar and Mr. Brochin. Because of Mr. Brochin’s views on the Sellinger fund, Mr. Teegardin says, he will not throw his club’s support behind the candidate this fall.
“We’re not supporting any other candidate,” the club president says. “We’re just keeping our mouths shut and not sending out volunteers.”
