0.cached.png
By Newsweek Editors
0
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
Budget cuts impose the hardes times state universities have seen since the Depression
Under a scorching summer sun last August, officials at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville had just concluded the ground-breaking ceremony for a new $6.2 million arts and sciences building. Less than two weeks later came the news from state budget conferees: those few shovels of dirt might be the end of construction for the foreseeable future. The bad news didn't stop there. Since then, Gov. L. Douglas Wilder has sliced funding to UVA by 17 percent, or $46 million. So far the cuts have meant that 125 empty jobs have not been filled. But next year UVA expects to lay off more people than it has since the Depression. "We're trying to get to a lean and mean size," says Louise Dudley, a UVA official. "But at some point, we won't be able to protect the academic programs anymore."
It's little comfort, but Virginia isn't alone. Twenty-six states report that they made midterm budget reductions this year and expect more in fiscal 1992, according to a survey released last week by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. "These cuts," says AASCU's Richard Novak, "spell long-term problems for higher education." In fact, for much of the country, higher education is public education; 77 percent of all collegiate enrollment is at state schools. That share will grow as family budgets, hurting every bit as much as state budgets, force students to opt out of expensive private schools that are facing money problems of their own (box). The education glass, of course, can also be viewed as half full. Despite the cuts, state spending on higher ed grew to a record $40.9 billion for 1991. But even officials in comparatively prosperous states are alarmed because the annual rate of increase has slowed to a 30-year low.
Read More on News
These budget crises have become political problems, too. New governors, who typically like to build campuses, not dent them, now find their edifice complexes completely frustrated. In Illinois, Gov. Jim Edgar ran, in part, as the education candidate. Upon taking office he had to slice $5.5 million out of the two state university campuses. Gov. Pete Wilson's austerity budget will mean a 40 percent increase in fees throughout the University of California system. And in Massachusetts, where state aid has plummeted from $757.2 million in 1988 to a proposed $471.3 million next year, new Gov. William Weld considered putting as many as five state colleges on the chopping block.
With less money coming from the state, more will have to come from students. "Tuition is going to escalate rapidly in some states," says James Mingle, executive director of the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association. "If we're not careful, we're going to price some people out of the market." That's exactly what angry students who have shut down classes at six of the 21 City University of New York (CUNY) campuses charge is happening already. For eight years tuition at CUNY and the 29-campus State University of New York didn't change. That ended with an increase last January. This, combined with a proposed new increase in tuition and a reduction in state financial aid for next fall, means that thousands of students will have to pay nearly double what they paid last year.
Since tuition at SUNY would rise to only $2,150 and to $1,950 at CUNY, critics charge that the state is still wasting money subsidizing the education of students from middle- and upper-middle-income families, who account for at least half the students at campuses like SUNY's Binghamton. SUNY chancellor D. Bruce Johnstone contends that public Ivys-the most prestigious public colleges-are a valued part of what he calls the enormous range of SUNY campuses. "l resent the notion that a public university is somehow being untrue to its mission when it happens to be attractive to some very well-prepared students-even from some upper-middle-income families." Indeed, such states as Texas, Kansas and California have always funded colleges to attract students from high-income and low income families alike. The average income for parents at the nine University of California campuses is $50,200. Even after next fall's increases, student fees will still be only $2,274 for California residents.
The budget cuts will also take a toll on teaching, libraries and counseling services. Because the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign pays among the lowest salaries of all the Big 10 schools, officials fear an exodus of talented faculty. Last year 65 of the school's 2,000 professors took offers at other institutions like Stanford University and Berkeley, and this year an additional 75 or 80 may follow. "The problem with those is that they are our best and brightest," says Walter Tousey, associate vice chancellor for academic affairs at Illinois. Like UVA, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, wants to protect its status as a public Ivy. But hundreds of offerings have been dropped from the university catalog.
At Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., political-science professor Michael Shafer says he has to make do with two part-time graders and no other teaching assistants. He's cut back on term papers and tests, because he can't give the papers the time they deserve. Meanwhile, class sizes have doubled. "Good teaching demands personalized contact with the students in the classroom and out," says Shafer. "As things stand now, that's simply impossible."
Student protesters have found little sympathy in state capitols. The attitude, says UCLA junior Andrew Faye, is "everybody's been cut, including prenatal care and welfare. Why should students be any different?" It's a difficult argument to answer. In February, Randolph W. Bromery, the chancellor of the 29-campus University of Massachusetts, stopped trying. He quit, saying, "Higher education is fragile. It simply cannot sustain these cuts." Even advocates of private colleges have joined the battle. "The state's greatest resource is its educated work force," says David Saxon, the retired head of MIT's governing body. "Our future depends on it." The beleaguered statehouse feels it has no choice. "Until we restore fiscal stability," says Lt. Gov. Paul Cellucci, "our hopes for the future of our children [have been] put on hold." In these matters, of course, the future is now.
Since the Morrill Act of 1862, public higher education has grown mightily. State systems now serve about 11 million students.
In the 11 years beginning in 1980, state support for higher education grew from $20.9 billion to $40.9 billion. Enrollment increased by about 1.3 million. Financial aid-grants and loans--is about $752 million.
States are now either cutting their budgets or slowing the rate of increase. On the surface, some cuts seem slight: last year New York sliced $42 million from its higher-education budget of $3.1 billion. But less money has to go further because of mandated salary increases and inflation.
Tuition and fees remain a bargain, compared with private colleges. At present it costs Virginia residents just $2,966 for tuition at Charlottesville. In North Carolina, residents pay $1,088.24 for a year at Chapel Hill.
The '80s are over-even at the nation's private colleges. After a decade of tuition hikes and expansion, private colleges are learning the hard lessons of Economics 101. It's a buyer's market: if predictions hold true, no more than 50 schools will reject more applicants than they accept this year.
Part of the blame goes to demographics-the baby boom has been replaced by the baby bust. "We're not going to see the number of high-school seniors we saw in 1988 again until 1998," says John Ruohoninemi, admissions director for St. Olaf College in Minnesota.
"That puts us all under tremendous pressure." The recession is also hurting. More high-school seniors are applying to their local state colleges, where the prospect of leaving school without a double-digit loan is still possible. While public institutions like the University of Virginia got 2,000 more applications this year than last, most private colleges are experiencing a 4 to 8 percent drop, the experts say, with some down as much as 20 percent. "The shrink is on," says Frank Burtnett of the National Association of College Admission Counselors. "A lot of kids are opting for 'Neighborhood U'." None of this will deflate costs, says Robert Rosenzweig of the Association of American Universities. But after a decade in which tuition hikes outstripped inflation, he predicts "a drop in the rate of increase."
That just spells more bad news for the privates most at risk-the small, unendowed, nonselective schools that rely on tuition money to balance their budgets. A recession coming at the start of a long demographic downturn "could be a lethal combination for these schools," says Robert Atwell, president of the American Council on Education. While it's unlikely that large numbers of colleges will shut down in the next decade--fewer institutions are harder to kill than a college--a shakeout seems inevitable. "We've all known this time's been coming," says Ruohoninemi. "The stronger schools will survive. Those that aren't won't." Deans of admissions will have to pass not only basic economics but biology, too.
View 0 Comments
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines