The General Assembly hereby finds:
(1) The availability of higher educational opportunities for families in the state with school-age children has become increasingly necessary in order to preserve and protect the health, welfare, and prosperity of the state and its citizens and the increasing competitiveness and technological sophistication of today's products, services, and markets and the growing importance of our dynamic economy requires a highly educated and well-trained work force in order for the state to preserve, protect, and promote employment opportunities;
(2) A strong system of higher education has been and will continue to be not only a wellspring for the enhancement of the state's cultural well-being, but also a substantial contributing factor to the growth of the state's economy by stimulating the development of new products and services, and the ability of families who are residents of the state to provide the means to afford the cost of higher education for the children in the family is a matter of highest concern to those families;
(3) The state has made a substantial investment in higher education through direct support of public higher education through appropriations, grants, subsidies, and loans, through support of student assistance, and its citizens, and through charitable and philanthropic support to public and private institutions of higher education from individuals and organizations within the state. As a result of this investment, the state has a major financial interest in assisting families in providing themselves with the means to bear the cost of higher education;
(4) In recent years tuition and other costs such as required fees and charges, room and board, and similar expenses have increased at rates in excess of the average inflation rate, while available sources of student assistance have not kept pace with those costs. Families have not found convenient and simple methods to make secure investments which meet the rising cost of higher education. The state would benefit from a program which would decrease families' reliance on borrowed funds and increase their opportunity to invest and save to meet college expenses;
(5) There is a growing need for the state to undertake projects to renew and expand the state's higher education facilities and physical plant, including the construction, repair, expansion, and renewal of various education facilities, and to provide for the acquisition of teaching and research equipment and library assets;
(6) As a consequence of the importance to the state in providing an appropriate vehicle for state residents in which to invest for the cost of higher education at a time when there is a present and growing need for the state to finance major improvements for its state institutions of higher education, an opportunity exists to address those combined and interrelated objectives of the state through a program which provides for the financing of a portion of the state institutions' higher education needs through a financing program also designed to meet the needs of families who desire a suitable investment to provide against the rising cost of higher education; and
(7) The General Assembly therefore finds that the public policies and responsibilities of the state as set out in this section cannot be fully obtained without the use of public financing and that such public financing can only be provided by the adoption of this subchapter by the General Assembly and its approval by the electors of the state.