Colorado Game Commission

Is it a Shell Game?
Colorado's controversial new way of handing out its higher education money

Winter 2007

Ask your typical Colorado public college or university students about the vouchers that are supposedly helping them pay for their education, and their brows furrow in puzzlement. Ask them about their stipends, and some of them show glimmers of awareness. But mention College Opportunity Fund, and most of their faces brighten in recognition.

COF (pronounced "cough"), Colorado's roundabout way of funding higher education, now in its second year, has caught students' attention, seeped into their vernacular and become part of their routine.

	Aaron Wiley, student body president at the Metropolitan State College of Denver, called the new plan "a gimmick." (Photo by Eric Lars Bakke, Black Star, for CrossTalk)

The Colorado Commission on Higher Education, however, persists in implying some sort of state benevolence, referring on one of its websites to "taxpayer-funded" instruments that students "bring with them" to college. Another Commission website goes so far as to proclaim in a headline: "In-State Undergraduates: The State of Colorado is Investing in Your Education. Money has been Put Aside for Your Tuition. Apply Now to Receive this New Benefit."

Online and in presentations at the state's secondary schools, the Commission is marketing the College Opportunity Fund, encouraging students as young as eighth graders to sign up. As of late last year, 350, 000 had done so, according to Jenna Langer, the commission's interim executive at the time.

Nicole Ebsen got the message and put her name on the line two years ago when she was a junior at Greeley West High School. Now a freshman at the University of Northern Colorado, in Greeley, she is among those who perceive that the COF is saving her money. "I can see it online when I pay my bill, " she said. "It shows a total, and it shows a credit for the COF stipend."

Given the complexities and the confusion about its name, it is little wonder that most students profess not to understand the COF entirely. Most can at least tell you, though, that it adds up to maybe $1, 000 or so, and that—at the click of a computer mouse—they can electronically deduct from their bills when they register for a semester of classes. Hey, it's "free money, " some say gleefully.

Hee Yeon Day, a sophomore at Colorado State University, is among the minority of pooh-poohers. "Some people think they're getting extra money from the state but they're not, " she said.

	Frank Waterous, of the Bell Policy Center, in Denver, thinks the new higher education funding plan is simply budgetary sleight-of-hand. (Photo by Eric Lars Bakke, Black Star, for CrossTalk)

In other words, it's just so much budgetary sleight of hand. And this is not merely students' chronic, sometimes uninformed, skepticism talking. Others with more detached perspectives describe this whole thing in even more negative terms: