Mississippi Today

Delta State has an enrollment problem. So far, no one’s been able to solve it.

Published

1 year ago

December 14, 2022

Delta State has an enrollment problem. So far, no one's been able to solve it.

by Molly Minta, Mississippi Today
December 14, 2022

For much of its 98-year existence, Delta State University enjoyed prosperous growth, educating more and more students in pursuit of becoming the “educational and cultural center” of the Mississippi Delta.

But in the last eight years, enrollment has plummeted at the regional college in Bolivar County faster than at any other public university in Mississippi. Headcount has dropped 29% percent since 2014, with just 2,556 students enrolled this year, raising questions about Delta State's ability to meet its mission and provide higher education to a region that's rapidly losing population.

Administrators have tried – and so far, largely failed – to reverse the decline. Enrollment dropped all but three years under the university's former president, William LaForge. Over the summer, the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees suddenly removed him, citing the lack of improvement in the university's financial and enrollment metrics. The board is now on the hunt for Delta State's next leader with the goal of filling the position in spring 2023.

Whoever takes the helm will face significant challenges. Years of plummeting enrollment, along with deep cuts to state funding, have strained Delta State's budget. This has forced the administration to cut programs, layoff faculty and staff, and delay much-needed maintenance and repairs. The pandemic hasn't helped.

And it's unclear if Delta State's two biggest budgetary strategies — raising tuition and cutting institutional scholarships — are even working or simply making the university unaffordable for the very community it's supposed to serve.

The administration knows that's a possibility. In 2019, the former provost warned that increasing tuition “still doesn't help cover the increasing cost of expenses due to a downward enrollment trend,” according to meeting minutes.

“Delta State may soon reach the saturation point of how much tuition Delta area students can afford to pay,” he told the president's cabinet.

In 2014, tuition at Delta State cost $6,012 a year before room and board. Now, it's up to $8,435, a quarter of the median household income in Bolivar County.

Delta State is also looking to hire a director of admissions, a search it closed in August 2022 because it was unsatisfied with the applicants.

Eddie Lovin, the vice president of student affairs, is overseeing enrollments in the meantime. In an email, he did not say if the administration thinks Delta State has reached the forewarned “saturation point” yet but wrote that “affordability is always a concern for all students, not just Delta students.”

Even though headcount declined again this fall, Lovin told Mississippi Today in an interview that he is “cautiously optimistic” enrollment will improve by 2024, citing an increase in the numbers of freshmen, transfer students and re-admitted students compared to last year.

The community is less sure. Last month, IHL trustees hosted a listening session on campus to gather input on the presidential search. The board also asked attendees to fill out an online survey. The majority of the 97 anonymous respondents identified enrollment as the biggest challenge facing Delta State. In written feedback, many said they wanted the next president to have a plan to bring more students to campus – even if that means recruiting beyond the Delta.

“How can we recapture the DSU of old and drive students from all over the state not just the Delta to DSU?” one respondent submitted.

Delta State has long had a complicated relationship with the region it serves. The historically white college was the last public university in the state to admit Black students in 1967.

While Delta State now enrolls a far higher percentage of Black students than the University of Mississippi or Mississippi State University, its demographics don't line up with the Delta's. In 2020, 33% of students at Delta State were Black and 55% were white, according to federal data – a near inversion of the demographics of Bolivar County, which is 65% Black and 33% white.

In 2013, the former president, LaForge, said he would focus on recruiting — he vowed that on his first day on the job, he would personally visit all the high schools in Cleveland. He also promised to fix the budget.

“For too long, Delta State's expenses have continued to rise while enrollment has decreased,” he said at his first convocation in 2014. “Both those trains have to stop, and we are committed to halting both and turning them in the right direction.”

LaForge had to repeatedly reduce the budget, often by $1 million or more. He closed the university's golf course at the recommendation of his cabinet and shuttered a slew of programs from athletic training to journalism.

In 2000, Delta State received roughly $21 million in state appropriations. If state funding had kept pace with inflation, the university would have received about $36 million from the Legislature this fiscal year. Instead, it got $20 million.

These state budget cuts have hamstrung the administration's ability to fund new programs or strategies to increase enrollment. But there were tactics the university could have pursued without more funding.

At a meeting in July 2015, the former dean of enrollment management, Debbie Heslep, told cabinet members that the university needed an enrollment plan crafted with input from the whole campus.

The plan should be led by a faculty member, not admissions, Heslep said, and provide a “clear direction and a unified decision on where to take our enrollment management efforts” like targeting National Merit semi-finalists, emphasizing particular majors, or increasing scholarships.

It's unclear from the meeting minutes if that ever happened. Interim Director of Communications Holly Ray told Mississippi Today via email that “Admissions has undergone restructuring quite a few times since then, so there isn't any one person who was there during that time to speak to it.”

By 2018, meeting minutes show the administration discussing how dire the financial situation had become. That July, Vice President for Finance and Administration James Rutledge told cabinet members there were three ways the university could improve its cash on hand: delaying infrastructure repairs, increasing tuition and cutting scholarships.

Each strategy, Rutledge warned, came with a “caveat … that shows it will be damaging to the university,” according to minutes.

“IHL Commissioner Al Rankins has seen the Financial Sustainability report, and he knows our three strategies can't be accomplished without terrible consequences,” Rutledge told the cabinet.

The reason Delta State was considering pursuing that latter strategy — reducing scholarships — was somewhat ironic. The university had routinely overspent its scholarship budget by $1 million, largely because of increased tuition.

For students, the reduction in scholarships can mean they're taking on more debt to go to college.

At Delta State, 60% of students take out federal loans to attend, according to the U.S. Department of Education's College Scorecard. After graduation, the median debt is a little over $21,000 – a significant amount compared to median earnings of about $37,000.

It remains to be seen if these strategies will meaningfully improve the school's budget. The influx of federal dollars during the pandemic has helped Delta State stay afloat the last two years. And while the university's cash on hand increased to 40 days in 2020 – the highest in 10 years – that's still nowhere near IHL's goal of 90 days.

But Delta State has a plan to improve enrollment now. At LaForge's direction, Lovin, the vice president of student affairs, prepared one for IHL last year. The plan emphasizes recruiting in nearby high schools so that Delta State can once again “own its own backyard” but also says the university must “expand its reach” to meet its needs.

The plan does not discuss Delta State's affordability. Lovin said he thinks the primary reason enrollment has declined is subpar recruiting efforts, not cost.

When he took over admissions, Lovin said he learned “we hadn't been to Cleveland High School in seven years,” he said. “It's a block down the street.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

Q&A: Explaining the health care coverage gap

Published

14 hours ago

April 18, 2024

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Mississippi Today – 2024-04-18 16:58:45

Lawmakers and advocates regularly refer to Mississippians without health insurance who are in the “coverage gap.” But what is the coverage gap, why does it exist and how does it relate to Medicaid expansion?

What is Medicaid?

Medicaid is a federal-state program that provides health coverage to millions of people in the U.S., including low-income adults, children, pregnant women, elderly adults and people with disabilities. States administer the program, which is funded by both states and the federal government. Mississippi participates in the traditional Medicaid program, but the Legislature is debating two differing proposals that would expand Medicaid.

What is the coverage gap?

The coverage gap refers to a certain group of uninsured people in states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, the federal health reform law enacted in 2010 under the Obama administration.

The law sought to make health insurance affordable and accessible to more people and provides subsidies that lower costs for households with incomes between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level, or between $18,210 and $72,840 in annual income, respectively, for an individual.

The Affordable Care Act also expanded Medicaid eligibility to adults under 64 years of age with income up to 138% of the federal poverty level – or $20,782 annually for an individual in 2024. But a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2012 made expansion optional, creating the “coverage gap” in states that did not opt to expand the federal-state program.

Why does it exist?

In Mississippi and the nine other states that have not expanded Medicaid, there is a gap between people whose income is not low enough to qualify for non-expanded Medicaid but less than 100% of the federal poverty level, or about $15,000 a year for an individual, to qualify for subsidized insurance through the federal marketplace. To qualify for Medicaid in Mississippi under current regulations, one's household income must be less than 28% of the federal poverty level, or a mere $7,000 annually for a family of three. Non-disabled childless adults are not eligible for Medicaid unless they have another qualifying condition.

How many people fall into the coverage gap?

Roughly 74,000 Mississippians fall into the coverage gap, according to a recent KFF study. Nationally, the number is 1.5 million people.

What is Mississippi's uninsured population?

Mississippi had one of the highest uninsured rates among working-age people in the country in 2022 at 16.4%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey.

Are people in the coverage gap employed?

In 2019, of the 178,000 uninsured Mississippians making below 138% of the poverty level, the majority – nearly 61% – were either working or looking for work. Many of those not in the labor force are unable to work due to a mental health or medical condition; lack of transportation; caring for a family member or recent incarceration, among other circumstances. More recent years' data has been skewed because of the COVID-19 pandemic and extended Medicaid coverage for people who would not have otherwise been eligible.

Nationally, according to KFF, the most common jobs of people in the coverage gap are cashiers, cooks, waiters-waitresses, construction/laborers retail salespeople and janitors.

What keeps businesses from offering health insurance to its employees or from offering it with reasonable deductibles?, according to Hilltop Institute at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Larger employers – those with over 50 employees – are required to offer health insurance to their employees or pay a penalty. For smaller employers, offering health insurance is not mandatory. And because it is often more expensive, smaller employers will offer benefits with higher deductibles and copays in order to reduce their own expenses. So those employed at a small business either may not have the option of health insurance or may choose to opt out because of cost.

Nearly 69% of private businesses in Mississippi employ fewer than 50 employees, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. It's up to 95% when public employees are included, according to Hilltop Institute at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

How many people would the House and Senate plans make eligible for Medicaid, and how many of those are in the coverage gap?

The House plan – which is traditional expansion under the Affordable Care Act and would make Mississippi eligible for hundreds of millions of federal dollars – is estimated to cover 200,000 Mississippians. That would include people in the coverage gap and others.

The Senate plan – which is not traditional expansion and does not qualify the state for the federal match – would insure about 40,000 Mississippians. This would include only people in the coverage gap, or only those making up to 99% of the federal poverty level.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

The unlikely Mississippi politician who could tank Medicaid expansion

Published

15 hours ago

April 18, 2024

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Adam Ganucheau – 2024-04-18 16:07:16

Note: This editorial is featured in Mississippi Today's weekly legislative newsletter. Subscribe to our free newsletter for exclusive access to legislative analysis and up-to-date information about what's happening under the Capitol dome.

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann is a good man who has dedicated his adult life to helping Mississippians.

That's why so many Mississippians are baffled by his dug-in position on Medicaid expansion, which right now threatens to kill one of the most transformative policy proposals that has moved through the Capitol since the 1980s.

Medicaid expansion would provide health insurance to 200,000 Mississippians, most of whom work in low-income, no-benefits jobs and cannot otherwise afford it. It would give so many of those people the chance to stay healthy and keep regular work for the first time in their lives. It would bring billions in additional federal money to the poorest state in the nation, where more than half our rural hospitals are on the verge of financial collapse and so many other needs are underfunded.

It would save lives and livelihoods, and it could legitimately change the trajectory of the state.

But Hosemann's stubborn position on one element of any potential expansion plan — requiring Medicaid recipients to work — jeopardizes the entire proposal. Across the nation, 13 states have tried to implement various forms of a work requirement for Medicaid recipients. The federal government, which runs and funds Medicaid, shot down all 13 efforts.

As legislative leaders will soon meet to try to agree on an expansion bill, Hosemann is doubling down on his insistence that any final plan include the work requirement, adding that its omission from a final bill will not get the Senate votes to pass. If he sticks to his guns, this would almost certainly mean Medicaid expansion dies in Mississippi.

“If you're not working, then you need to go get a job,” Hosemann said in a conservative radio interview just two days ago, reiterating his desire for a work requirement. “… We want them to be working. We have a 53.9% labor participation rate. That's horrific, the worst in the country … If you want a job in Mississippi, you can get one. And so we thought it was very important to have people who are working to have the opportunity to have health care. That's why we passed what we did.”

The state's labor participation rate is, indeed, dismal. But the lieutenant governor in the interview didn't mention the very legitimate reasons so many Mississippians, the unhealthiest American citizens with some of the nation's worst rates of chronic illnesses, cannot work. He did not detail the many financial barriers to those same Mississippians, who are the poorest in the nation, have to finding and keeping steady employment. He did not touch on the state's child care crisis, which for many Mississippians makes regular child care more expensive than what a person can make in a full-time minimum wage job.

The irony of Hosemann being the roadblock to passing Medicaid expansion is not lost on people who closely observe Mississippi politics. For years, Hosemann has been among the only prominent Republican leaders to express openness to it (though he has always refused to use the term “Medicaid expansion”). As he sat largely alone on that limb, conservative Republicans worked hard to use it against him, even helping earn him the moniker “Delbert the Democrat” from his 2023 GOP primary challenger Chris McDaniel.

On expansion and several other issues, Hosemann, who crushed McDaniel in that primary, has been a more moderate voice than most of his right-wing Republican counterparts. In a polarized state in a polarized political era, many people respect him greatly for that. Few modern Mississippi politicians could boast legitimate bipartisan support, but Hosemann certainly is on that list.

I've closely covered and gotten to know Hosemann for many years now. I've personally witnessed his strong character. I've taken up for him a great deal, even landing the nickname “Delbert's bootlicker-in-chief” from his political opponents last year. What I've seen is a measured, thoughtful and wildly intelligent leader. He's a true numbers guy and a policy wonk, and he's surrounded himself with smart advisers.

He's focused as much of his career on health care improvements as any modern Mississippi elected official. Before he entered public life, he was a legal adviser to health care organizations. Since he was elected, he's visited struggling hospitals and built strong relationships with the most important health leaders in the state, who have persistently talked with him about the benefits of expanding Medicaid. He even visited Arkansas before last year's legislative session to personally learn and study their unique expansion model. He knows what's at stake, and he knows the solutions.

Most people assumed Hosemann would be the out-front leader on expansion, but that has not yet happened. He appeared flat-footed when House Speaker Jason White pushed a traditional expansion plan through his GOP-controlled chamber with overwhelming ease. And what he proposed a month later is not an expansion plan at all.

Hosemann and his fellow Senate Republican leaders tossed aside the House proposal without public debate or serious consideration and proposed their own plan that would draw down hundreds of millions dollars less than the House's traditional expansion plan would. Additionally, the Senate plan would insure between 150,000-200,000 fewer Mississippians than the House plan.

But none of the differences in the House and Senate plans would matter at all if Hosemann keeps his heels dug in on the work requirement. The federal government will not approve it, and a federal court challenge — very much a shot in the dark during a big presidential election year — could cost state taxpayers millions and continue to leave people without health insurance and hospitals without financial help for years to come.

Across the nation, 20 Republican-controlled states expanded Medicaid even without being able to include their coveted work requirement. Those states came up with creative solutions that still drew down the full federal dollars and opened wide the door for increased health care access while instilling the value and importance of hard work.

Hosemann, often to his credit, has made a point to let Senate Republicans make their own decisions and not strong-arm them into unfavorable votes. But at the end of the day, some of the most transformative policy proposals require strong leadership. In North Carolina, for instance, the latest red state to expand Medicaid, bold and pragmatic leadership from the Republican Senate leader who previously stood against expansion prevailed.

“I felt that I had a certain responsibility — that if the reasons that I had articulated for 10 years no longer exist, then I had a responsibility to be honest with myself and be honest with other people about that,” Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger told The New York Times last year. “And so I talked to my members, and I told them where I was — and why.”

In 2020, Hosemann employed this exact strategy to help garner enough Republican votes to change the state flag, then the last in the nation containing the Confederate battle emblem. Those were tough votes for many Republicans, but one-by-one, Hosemann brought in the holdout senators, laid out his own position to them and asked them to consider changing their votes. It worked.

If Hosemann has a willingness to find creative solutions around the work requirement or talk to his Republican Senate colleagues about supporting a real Medicaid expansion program, he's not publicly expressed it. If he doesn't, lawmakers will likely go home without expansion in early May despite being closer to true transformation than ever.

Whether the effort passes or dies in the coming days will likely be in Hosemann's hands. But two major questions remain: Can the most prominent Republican champion of Medicaid expansion for years get it across the finish line? And does he even have the desire to?

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

Brother wants answers after body pulled from Pearl River IDed as missing Jackson man

Published

16 hours ago

April 18, 2024

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Mina Corpuz – 2024-04-18 15:17:59

With a preliminary identification of remains pulled from the Pearl River as that of missing Belhaven Heights resident Dau Mabil, his brother has secured a restraining order barring the body's release before an autopsy and U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson is requesting a Justice Department investigation.

A preliminary autopsy of a body recovered from Lawrence County was completed and an official DNA confirmation is expected by early next week, said Bailey Martin, a spokesperson for the Department of Public Safety. In a Facebook post, Lawrence Counnty Sheriff Ryan Everett said the preliminary autopsy “did not reveal any type of foul play. The official determination may be made at a later time, pending further testing.”

On Thursday, Mabil's brother, Bul Mabil, and his attorney Lisa Ross gathered at the Museum Trail entrance in Belhaven Heights where Dau Mabil was last seen.

“We want to know what happened to Dau,” said Bul Mabil. “And if anybody has put their hand on my brother, these people will have to be held accountable. And that's why I'm here to get to the bottom of it.”

Last image of Dau Mabil on Jefferson Street in Jackson, Miss., before he disappeared on March 25, 2024.

Video surveillance from the area showed what is believed to be several people moving a body into a truck, said Lisa Ross, Bul Mabil's attorney.

They were at the trail to show where Mabil likely fought for his life and to encourage people to come forward with any information about his disappearance.

Thursday morning, Hinds County Chancery Court Judge Dewayne Thomas approved Bul Mabil's request for an emergency temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to prevent the release of Dau's body until autopsies can be done by the State Medical Examiner's office and an independent examiner, according to court records.

“Given the nature of Mr. Mabil's disappearance and the location of the body found, it is likely that an autopsy will be required to determine if foul play was involved,” Thomas wrote in his order.

Defendants named in the restraining order are Mabil's wife, Karissa Bowley, the Capitol Police and the State Medical Examiner's office. Judge Thomas' order notes that none of the defendants or attorneys representing them came to the Thursday morning hearing.

“We were very concerned that a body could be released without a proper autopsy being done,” Ross said. “We know that autopsies are very important in determining a cause of death, and this family wants to know the cause of death.”

Bowley did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday afternoon.

On Wednesday, Thompson asked the Department of Justice to open an investigation into the disappearance of the Jackson man.

“Your immediate attention is necessary because I have been informed your immediate action is necessary because of the circumstances surrounding his disappearance,” Thompson wrote in a Wednesday letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland.

In the letter, Thompson mentioned the discovery of human remains in the Pearl River over the weekend, which he was informed could be Mabil.

Mabil, 33, was last seen March 25 after his wife said she received a text message from him and he left without his phone. Video footage showed him near Jefferson Street between Fortification and High Street, along his usual walking area between Belhaven Heights and downtown.

The family filed a missing persons report with the Capitol Police, which has jurisdiction over the Belhaven and downtown area where Mabil lives and was last seen.

The family said they did not believe that he disappeared without a reason.

Bul Mabil is calling on Capitol Police and the Jackson Police Department to work together and find out what happened to Dau. A spokesperson from the Department of Public Safety declined to comment further because of an open and active investigation.

Bul Mabil said his brother was the youngest of six siblings. Their mother who still lives in a refugee camp is devastated by his death. Dau Mabil has a son. whom Bul Mabil said he plans to raise.

The brothers were brought to Jackson after escaping war torn Sudan, and in America they hoped for a better life.

“None of us believed that we would lose our lives here … and look what happened?” said Bul Mabil. “My brother is not here.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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