Colorado voters believe improving education is significantly more important than tax cuts to improve the economy, but only 36 percent believe the state is spending “too little” on public colleges and universities, a survey released Monday found.
Nearly 85 percent of voters polled said that improving the quality of education is either extremely or very important to the economy while only 46 percent said lower income tax rates will improve the state economy, the bipartisan poll by Talmey-Drake Research and Strategy Inc. and Public ap Strategies found.
But 42 percent of voters said that the state spends the right amount of money on higher education, 36 percent said it was not enough and 10 percent said it was too much.
Despite more than $400 million in higher education cuts in the past three years, the survey results were nearly identical to those for the same question asked in 1993, when 41 percent of respondents said the right amount was spent on higher education, 35 percent said too little was spent and 7 percent said too much.
Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper said voters are not making a direct link between education and money spent on it.
“If people think that investing in education is any less an investment in infrastructure than building a bridge or an airport, they’re crazy,” he said during a panel discussion of the survey at an education summit Monday.
University of Colorado president Hank Brown, also on the panel, said that without increased funding, through Referendum C, higher education will suffer. The referendum asks voters to let the state keep $3.7 billion over the next five years that would otherwise be refunded under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.
“If C fails, it’s quite clear that support for higher education in the state budget is going to disappear,” Brown said.
Despite the number believing enough was spent on higher education, 59 percent of voters agreed there were too many cuts in higher education, leaving questions about whether people understand education funding.
“The voters are somewhat in flux about how they feel about higher education,” said Lori Weigel of Public ap Strategies.
The survey also showed that Latinos have more concerns than white voters about the quality of their children’s education. About 16 percent of all the respondents rated their schools with an “A,” while only 10 percent of Latinos gave their schools the top grade.
The results were released during the “Education to Elevate Colorado’s Economy” summit at the University of Denver Monday.
The survey of 693 voters has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.
Staff Writer Arthur Kane can be reached at 303-820-1626 or at akane@denverpost.com.
