Colorado’s colleges and universities will ask lawmakers next year to raise the state’s contribution to higher education, and they’ll be armed with a new study that shows state schools trailing their peers in funding by $832 million.
It’s proof that Colorado has some serious catching up to do, but solving higher education’s status in the state won’t be as simple as benevolent lawmakers opening up the checkbook.
What Colorado needs first is a statehouse consensus on higher education.
Political leaders need to see higher education as a tool to drive Colorado’s 21st century economy and not as a drag on the state’s budget. The goal of sending more Colorado kids to college is a social and economic imperative, as parents and business leaders can easily explain.
A practical vision of the benefits of public education will make it easier for lawmakers to commit the appropriate resources. Having said that, money is scarce and the goal is necessarily ambitious.
It will take years of increases to make up for drastic budget cuts this decade.
In recent years, state colleges and universities tried to make up for a lack of state funding with higher tuition, a stop-gap that put a strain on low and middle income families as schools try to increase access to those very constituents.
“We’re a high-tuition state if you happen to be poor,” says Colorado State University President Larry Penley said. “We don’t have the financial aid.”
Gov. Bill Owens proposed about a $50 million increase for higher education in his final budget, while Colorado Commission on Higher Education director Jenna Langer, an Owens appointee, has suggested $100 million for each of the next five years.
Even with increases at that level, Colorado would still lag other states. Lawmakers already are finding excuses to limit the increase, but they need to see education as an investment and not an expense.
In trying to address the higher education shortfall, the legislature faces a fiscal dilemma. While Referendum C in 2005 freed up millions of dollars each year, continuing restrictions do not allow the state to spend more than 6 percent over the previous year from the general fund. If lawmakers truly want to invest in higher education, and in Colorado’s future, they’ll have to embark on serious discussions about that provision in the law, known as Bird-Arveschoug.
Named after two former lawmakers, the spending limit, combined with ballooning Medicaid and prison costs, threatens to undermine higher education efforts for years to come.
