New Op-Ed: Budget Deal Leaves Higher Education Short

On June 15, 2018, Fox & Hounds published an op-ed from Dick Ackerman and Mel Levine, co-chairs of the California Coalition for Public Higher Education, titled, “Budget Deal Leaves Higher Education Short.” Here’s an excerpt:

For a few days, it appeared that Sacramento’s budget-makers were on the right track, but the final Budget numbers once again fall short when it comes to higher education funding. The Joint Legislative Budget Conference Committee had approved the modest “full funding” requests to enable campuses to increase enrollment and avoid further tuition increases. But that decision didn’t survive the chopping block when Governor Jerry Brown and Legislative leaders hammered out a final Budget deal—leaving UC support basically flat and providing CSU with only a limited boost over the Governor’s May proposal. What additional monies that were provided relied primarily on one-time funding rather than ongoing support. How can campuses admit four-year students with only one-year funding?

The op-ed continues:

The Governor has stressed the importance of having a robust “rainy day” fund to prepare for a downturn in the economy. Well, UC and CSU have been experiencing more than two decades of rainy days. Per student State support for UC has been cut in half and per student State funding for CSU is down more than a quarter. All the while, student enrollment has continued to increase and applications are setting records. It is not enough that recent budgets have stopped siphoning off higher education funding and provided some fiscal relief for both UC and CSU. The time has come to reinvest in higher education for the sake of California’s future.

Read the complete op-ed on the Fox & Hounds website.