Town Hall Meeting at Kennesaw State University
The down economy is taking its toll on higher education.
The University of Nevada at Reno plans to close its agriculture school. Arizona is considering tuition hikes in excess of 30 percent. In Georgia, lawmakers have asked the state’s 35 public colleges and universities to plan for $300 million in cuts on top of a $265 million reduction already proposed for the 2011 fiscal year, which begins this July.
The proposed cuts come as Georgia legislators attempt to shore up a projected $1.1 billion budget hole. State law prohibits the legislature from deficit spending.
“The (Georgia) Constitution mandates a balanced budget,” said Republican State Senator Seth Harp. “You can’t borrow money like in California like a bunch of drunken sailors.”
In sometimes contentious budget hearings with university officials, another state senator suggested it was time for parents and students to pony up.
“We’re becoming a socialist society when we say that you shouldn’t raise tuition at all,” said Republican State Senator Don Balfour. “My son’s in school at Georgia when he’s here in country. And what he pays for school is embarrassingly cheap compared to what he even paid for a private high school.”
But for state school students who work jobs to fund their education, any tuition increase is cause for concern.
“Many of us are already struggling to make ends meet,” a student told a standing room only crowd at a town hall style meeting at Kennesaw State University. “How then will many of the people in this room be able to support themselves and continue to attend?”
Administrators say it’s unlikely students would have bear the entire burden of the proposed cuts (a scenario that would involve an estimated tuition hike of 77 percent). They say more likely scenarios would involve a combination of smaller tuition hikes, the elimination of certain programs and layoffs of professors, including tenured faculty.
“What’s at stake, or course, is the quality of public education going forward,” said Erroll Davis, Jr., chancellor of the University System of Georgia. “We have to continue to make it accessible, affordable and high quality. And it takes money to do that.”
Senator Harp said he takes no pleasure in asking Georgia’s colleges and universities to make such sacrifices, but that the legislature has already squeezed money from virtually every other source possible.
“There are some areas of the budget that we just absolutely can not cut,” Harp said. “We’ve closed two of the smaller prisons. We have a prison population of 50 thousand people. Are we gonna dump them out on the people of Georgia? I don’t think so.”