(Radio Iowa) – The leaders of Iowa’s private colleges and universities oppose a plan to have community colleges start offering four-year degrees in some fields. Iowa has three state supported universities, 15 state funded community colleges and 26 private colleges and universities. Mark Putnam, President of Central College in Pella, is chairman of the Iowa Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. He says that map shows there are no so-called “education deserts” in Iowa. “The fact that we may have a workforce need does not create students,” Putnam says. “That’s what I think is a fundamental flaw.” Drake University President Marty Martin says the reality is the number of high school graduates is declining and there’s no proof Iowa has education deserts.

“A lot of the rhetoric around it has to do with differential and cost of tuition, but of course in once instance you’ve got the state underwriting the program,” Martin said, “and in another instance you’ve got us operating as private, entrepreneurial, innovative institutions.” Martin says Iowa’s private colleges already have agreements that allow students to transfer with the community college credits they’ve earned. “We can figure this out without creating a whole new infrastructure that’s going to require a lot of funding from the taxpayers and put a lot of our institutions at risk,” Martin said. Under the plan being developed in the Iowa House, community colleges would get 20 million dollars in each of the next five years to set up four-year degree programs. The bill says a community college within 50 miles of Iowa, Iowa State, U-N-I OR a private college cannot offer four year degrees. Putnam says that does not address the existence of the satellite campuses community colleges operate.

“You take the example of Buena Vista,” Putnam says. “…In Storm Lake, Iowa Central (Community College) has a campus and so they would be able, under this bill, to open up baccalaureate programs in the direct fields that Buena Vista offers, so this is education, business, agriculture, computer science — down the list of all those that would be approved, so we have a fundamental concern that this is opening up a pathway where we don’t see an end to what that appetite might be.”

Putnam and Martin made their comments this weekend on “Iowa Press” on Iowa P-B-S.