One Man's Taylor-made Tuition

By EMILY MITCHELL

Advocates of educational reform are not usually known for their fancy gold chains or expensive rattlesnake and elephant hide cowboy boots. That suits Patrick Taylor, 53, just fine; he likes to stand out, even in a high-minded crowd. For the past 18 months, the publicity-loving, strikinglygarbed Louisiana oilman has been cutting a swath across the U.S., lobbying state legislatures to adopt a plan that would guarantee qualified and needy students a tuition-free education. Taylor calls his scheme a kid's bill of rights and declaims, "We must ensure that high school does not become just a dead end."

In 1989 the Taylor plan became a law in Louisiana, and 1,300 students in the & state have benefited from his enthusiastic vision. Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, New Mexico and Texas have enacted their own versions, which will pay all or most tuition bills and other fees at state colleges, and a Maryland plan is expected to be signed into law later this month. Taylor knows what a free college education can do. At age 16, he says, he left home in Beaumont, Tex., with nothing but a suitcase full of clothes, 35 cents and the desire to attend college. He chose Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and earned a petroleum engineering degree. Eventually he became one of Louisiana's richest men as owner of oil- and gas-producing Taylor Energy Co. (1990 revenues: $50 million).

Taylor's plangrew out of a speech-making performance in 1988 to 183 seventh- and eighth-graders at Livingston Middle School in New Orleans. Most were lagging behind several grades; many were on the verge of dropping out. On impulse, Taylor asked who would like to go to college. Every hand shot up. If they studied hard, did well and stayed out of trouble, he promised to send them. The "Taylor Kids," as they are called, accepted the challenge: 126 are still in school.

The spur-of-the-moment offer was not unlike one made by New York City industrialist Eugene Lang in 1981. Lang offered to foot college bills for an entire sixth-grade class of inner-city youths, an act that led to the founding of the I Have a Dream Foundation. Taylor took this notion one step further by selling legislatures on his idea and making it a law.

High school kids must work hard to qualify for the programs. In Louisiana needy students have to take a college-preparatory core curriculum, maintain a 2.5 grade-point average and score at least 20 out of 36 on the Enhanced American College Test. Some black legislators, however, object to the requirements, which they feel exclude too many disadvantaged minority kids. Other lawmakers wonder where the states will find the millions of dollars needed to pay for the programs. Taylor, who still hands out about $300,000 a year to help needy students, fires back that "only 14% of our youth are graduating from college. If we don't double that in the next 10 years or so, we could cease to function as a leading industrial power."

With reporting by Richard Woodbury/New Orleans