Last week, while the University of Colorado debated grade inflation and community colleges battled residential campuses for a fair share of student aid, a bigger question loomed.
What does this state want from its higher education system?
If you think things are ducky because Referendum C money is rolling in faster than predicted, think again. Within the next few weeks, the Colorado Commission on Higher Education will release a report that features a continuing ugly truth.
Public funding for a first-rate public university system in Colorado remains hundreds of millions of dollars behind comparable programs in the rest of the country.
Statewide, said Dennis Jones, the private consultant who crunched the numbers, Colorado’s institutions of learning enjoy only two-thirds of the funding of their out-of-state peers.
“A couple are funded at less than two-thirds, a couple at more,” Jones said. “But nobody is funded as well.”
It’s all a matter of how far behind they are.
This brings us to expectations. CU-Boulder, the state’s flagship school, doesn’t crack the top 50 in most overall national university ratings. The rest of the state’s schools rank back in the academic race.
They’ll all be falling further behind without intervention. Some Coloradans think higher education already gets too much money. Others think better funding is the lifeblood of the state’s future workforce and its quality of life.
Money is not the only answer, Colorado higher ed executive director Jenna Langer said. But efficiencies forced by funding cuts are tapped out. What’s left now, she explained, are “quality and access issues.”
And the need for a serious financial commitment.
On Dec. 7, Langer, an appointee of Republican Gov. Bill Owens, will head to the Democratic-controlled General Assembly’s Joint Budget Committee. She’ll bring an audacious request. She wants Colorado’s higher education budget increased by $100 million a year each of the next five years.
“We’re $800 million under what we should be at,” Langer said. “This is a conservative approach.”
That’s bold talk in the land of TABOR, the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. But it is honest. Funding cuts have led to larger classes, faculty-hiring slowdowns and building delays that will cost the state in the long run if they aren’t addressed.
To understand how bad things have been, remember that CU-Boulder’s students had to vote themselves a fee increase to build a new law school because the state legislature lacked the foresight and the guts to invest in their future.
There will surely be sticks in the mud who charge fear-mongering when they hear Langer defend big budget increases by saying she will otherwise have to close community colleges and limit enrollments at schools. These were reasons given to justify Referendum C, which let the state keep five years’ worth of revenue that would otherwise have been refunded to taxpayers under TABOR.
The thing is, Chicken Little never made this call. Jones’ research shows that the sky really is falling.
Langer picked Jones and his National Center for Higher Education Management Systems to pick peer institutions for each of Colorado’s public colleges and universities. She went outside the house to make sure no school stacked the deck by comparing its funding and endowment to, say, Harvard.
We’re not going to get Harvard in Boulder or MIT in Fort Collins. We’re not even going to get the University of Virginia or Cal-Berkeley. Jones compared CU with the University of Texas at Austin, among others. He paired Colorado State University with the likes of Virginia Tech. He did the same thing all over the state. In every case, he found Colorado’s schools lacking in money.
Some of us would argue that this makes Colorado’s schools want for academic prestige.
The University of Texas at Austin, CU-Boulder’s putative peer, ranks 47th nationally, according to U.S. News and World Report’s 2007 guide to America’s best colleges. CU, meanwhile, checked in at 77th, tied with Virginia Tech. CSU, which is supposed to be Tech’s peer, ranked 124th nationally.
Both Colorado schools rest a bit above the 50th percentile when compared with the country’s finest public and private colleges and universities. That is respectable. What the state must decide, as it ponders Jones’ research, is whether respectable is enough.
Dare we dream of distinguished?
They call Washington University in St. Louis the “Harvard of the Midwest.”
We’ll find out soon if Colorado’s leaders will allow CU-Boulder to become the “Texas of the Rockies.”
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-954-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com.
