Legislative Solutions for College Costs Could Aid State Recruiting

10/14/2007

Paul Munnis


If Minnesota wants to attract and retain the best and the brightest college grads to our State then what we have to do is to create best-of-breed, low cost, long-term, student loan mortgage refinancing programs to help college graduates to refinance their college loans at very favorable rates and terms.

Students will then flock to Minnesota if we create a good deal for them. They will come to get relief over onerous debt; they will come to attend school in a state that treats them with compassion and understanding over their debt load. They will come because low cost financing is available and eager recruiters are welcoming them with job opportunities. They will come because students saddled with the equivalent of a house mortgage need real help and not just political jaw-boning. "If we build it then they will come" -- to paraphrase "Field of Dreams."

How would it work? Forget new taxes - instead attract and create new high earning base taxpayers by successfully competing for talent.

Employers would be allowed to opt into a State recruiting pool. They would pay a recruitment fee into this pool. It would be tax deductible. The State would seed the pool with some start up money. This pool of money would be used to refinance college debt for those students having top needed skills.

The higher the debt, the more points awarded and hence the longer the debt could be spread out over in order to lower the amount of the monthly payment. If the person chooses to relocate to another State after some period then Minnesota would refinance the debt for them, at a higher rate, and thus free the debtor to move on and to relocate. The profit on the refinanced loan would then go into the recruitment pool in order to make even more students eligible.

Done right, we could target skills awarding points by most desirable skill base and put together (for example) a PhD/MD magnet program for medical doctors. We could target researchers in Chemistry. We could in fact decide what industries that that we want in our State and then use the program to attract skilled workers for our Minnesota companies. This would foster more companies to have a presence in Minnesota in order to make their companies eligible to participate.

It would be a win-win program for all. Minnesota would obtain a skilled labor pool for use by Minnesota companies. Students would get an opportunity to create a quality future for themselves and their families here in Minnesota. Democrats would implement a quality program that other states would envy and thus seek to emulate. Minnesota college students would benefit because they would have a future after graduating from a Minnesota college or University thus aiding recruiting. Minnesota would create a strong talent pool with a good earnings base, thus our tax revenues would be improved. Such a program might be used to improve our bond rating too.

We need to do more than just empathize with our young – we need to deliver solid win-win programs to attract and retain the best and brightest of them to our state.

This is one way to do that.