When state lawmakers return to the Capitol next week, they’ll quickly be greeted by higher education leaders with their hands outstretched, and not just for a welcome-back handshake.
Colleges and universities – each school with its own unique needs and programs – will be seeking an infusion of state aid that would restore funding cuts during the recent recession. Lawmakers will be left with the critical task of solving the puzzle of Colorado’s higher education funding.
The state has seen a revenue boom in recent months, but spending constraints may limit the amount that can be channeled to restore college funding levels.
Even if they wanted to pump hundreds of millions back into colleges and universities to make up for past cuts and to bring state schools more in line with their peers, lawmakers couldn’t because of constitutional mandates on spending.
“There’s not much the legislature can do,” CU president Hank Brown conceded Wednesday.
Higher education leaders paint grim pictures of their funding situations, and for the most part they’re right. Our institutions would need $832 million in extra funding just to meet average funding levels of national peers, according to a recent study.
State colleges receive just 65 percent of the funding that their peers across the country do, while research universities receive only about 35 percent, Brown noted.
The Colorado Commission on Higher Education is seeking a $100 million increase for higher education for each of the next five years, but Colorado would still lag behind. Even if the funding is forthcoming, Colorado’s schools would still end up elbowing each other at the statehouse, as each school and each group, whether it’s research universities or community colleges, jockeys for better funding. School leaders always say they don’t want an increase in their funding to hurt the other guy, but there’s really no choice. There isn’t enough to go around.
CU’s Brown is drawing up a plan for the future of higher education that he hopes to submit to the CCHE, and then the legislature, within a few weeks. He believes higher education must articulate a vision that everyday Coloradans, not just the legislature, can buy into before its long-term funding needs are met.
It would be a good start. Colorado needs a statehouse consensus on higher education first, and leaders who see it as a tool to drive our 21st century economy.
Then, it will be up to gutsy lawmakers to offer substantial changes to the way the state budgets its money.
