The study was issued by the independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

While Hawai'i has managed to keep community colleges affordable, making it "one of the best-performing states" in this area, the report notes that undergraduate students in the state are averaging $3,580 in loans annually compared with $2,754 a decade ago. That's a 30 percent increase.

The story is the same in every state, with the report showing few gains across the country during the past 10 years, and families everywhere finding it tougher now to pay for college than in the early 1990s.

"It's getting harder to pay the tuition," said Venus Taumanupepe, a 20-year-old political studies major at Chaminade University of Honolulu, whose tuition is paid by a combination of parental support and financial aid. "I'm trying to pick only two loans because I don't want to end up paying it all back when I'm done with school."

Improvements needed

"Hawai'i remains mediocre in any way you can measure," said the center's senior analyst Mikyung Ryu, who is based in Washington, D.C.

Acting University of Hawai'i President David McClain said the report "continues to remind us we have future improvements we need to make."

He included better financing for UH in that category.

"With the increase of funding for the university being fractionally up and enrollment being sharply up," McClain said, "we have some more improvement to make and we're committed to doing that, but we need some help from our friends" at the state Legislature.

Issue of affordability

The report reflects problems with public higher education across the nation in the past few years as state revenues have fallen, leaving less money to support public colleges and universities, which have increasingly resorted to raising tuition or limiting access.

While the report notes that Hawai'i has "held the line over the past decade in the percentage of income that students and families pay to attend the state's two-year colleges," it also points out that the state has lost ground in keeping public four-year colleges affordable. In 2004, 23 percent of a family's income went to pay for a public four-year college, compared to 20 percent 10 years ago in Hawai'i and 16 percent nationally.

Currently, annual tuition at the University of Hawai'i community colleges is about $1,150 for 12 credit hours, while Manoa's tuition is $3,580. While UH is in the midst of a five-year, phased-in tuition increase of 3 percent annually at Manoa, many state schools bumped their costs up as much as 20 percent last year.

"The goal would be to keep that low," said state Sen. Norman Sakamoto, D-15th (Waimalu, Airport, Salt Lake), chairman of the Senate Education Committee.

He said that a state goal has always been "to provide opportunity for more people at the community college as an entry level" for college.

High school grads

"Hawai'i remains mediocre in preparing students for college," it said.

"Compared with a decade ago, relatively fewer youth are completing high school within four years and the likelihood of students enrolling in college by age 19 has dropped."

Hawai'i figures show that in 1992, 78 percent of ninth-graders graduated from high school in four years. That number dropped to 64 percent in 2000, said center analyst Ryu.

"The point is, compared to 10 years ago, many states are failing to get students out of high school in four years, although of those who complete high school, more go to college," Ryu said.

Hawai'i State Department of Education spokesman Greg Knudsen disputed some of the reports findings, saying that high school graduation numbers have remained constant while high school enrollment numbers have declined.

"This doesn't seem consistent with the number of students graduating each year," Knudsen said. "It fluctuates year to year, but it's a somewhat steady line. It's not decreasing."

Tracking freshmen

Knudsen said there's an unexplained bulge in the number of ninth-graders compared to the numbers of 10th-, 11th- and 12th-graders. The national statistics use ninth-grade numbers and compare them to graduation figures four years later.

Jim Shon, newly named executive director of the state's charter schools, and most recently a policy analyst with the Hawai'i Educational Policy Center at UH, said this raises more questions that aren't being answered.

"We know if you take a freshman class of 14,000, by the time you get to graduation you're at 10,000 or less," Shon said. "Where are people going is the real question. Are they just dropping out? Being held back? Transferring?

"One of the things this raises is it's extraordinarily difficult to track kids as they move in and out of public, private, home or charter schools. Or just move. People go from one school to another and there may or may not be ways of tracking them."

Smoother transitions

Nonetheless, the report points out that the chance of Hawai'i students going to college after high school has gone from 44 percent 10 years ago to 38 percent today. It's a situation Hawai'i educators are trying to change.

More than a year ago, UH, the DOE and the Good Beginnings Alliance launched a P-20 initiative to smooth transitions between high school and college, and enhance education at every level. UH's McClain said the initiative is moving ahead on several projects.

"It is the case that the drop-off between ninth grade and the completion of high school is noticeable," said McClain. "But it's pretty interesting that even in the best state in the country, Massachusetts, 28 percent of the ninth-graders still graduate from college in six years."

Minority factor

While there are many strengths in Hawai'i, there are still major challenges facing the state, according to the national policy center. For instance, every year 1,361 more students leave the state than enter to attend college; and just 46 percent of Hawai'i college entrants complete a bachelor's degree within six years. Among the top states, that number is 64 percent. The report also questions equal opportunity access.

"If all ethnic groups had the same educational attainment and earnings as whites," noted the report, "total personal income in the state would be about $1.3 billion higher. And the state would realize an estimated $454 million in additional tax revenues."

As recently as this week, a group of Filipino students pushing for additional support for a fairly new bachelor's degree in Filipino language and literature noted that Filipinos continue to be underrepresented at the Manoa campus. In the past, Native Hawaiian leaders of the Center for Hawaiian Studies have also complained about the small percentage of Native Hawaiian students and faculty at Manoa.

McClain said in measuring accessibility and affordability, the report fails to consider $35 million in tuition waivers given to UH students every year — about one-quarter of the total tuition bill. However, the waiver system is under review as the university considers a scholarship system to more specifically address financial need. Last year the Legislature established a state scholarship fund, without financing it, and McClain is asking for $20 million to launch it this year. Sakamoto said his hope is that legislators will finance it.