The snow settles on the spindly tree branches on the still University of Boulder campus this February morning, while inside the Wolf Law building, Hank Brown drills the five students who have braved the previous night’s storm to attend his legislative law class.
Despite barraging his students with questions, Brown doesn’t employ the Socratic method. He never bullies, never belittles them if they don’t know the answer. Brown is too accomplished a communicator for that. He cajoles, but if the answer isn’t forthcoming, he supplies it himself and always ends each topic with a teaching thought. And frequently, there’s that Hank Brown moment, the wry grin and smiling eyes that signal the humorous zinger he’s about to deliver, filled with irony and a slight hint of the sardonic, to make a simple statement loaded with meaning.
It is the same smile he used with a special Republican joint Senate-House caucus on Capitol Hill earlier that month, when in lobbying for increased money for higher education, he admitted, “I’m not too comfortable bringing this message to this group.”
Brown is describing a higher-education scenario in which the system may be hard pressed to recover from years of a legislative starvation diet. He warned the Republicans that one more economic downturn, and higher ed in Colorado likely would take a further 50 percent hit in state funding.
That’s on top of a $74 million cut in state funding during the last five years, leaving Colorado ranked at 41 percent of its research institution peer average, while coming in at 120 percent above the norm in tuition and fees per college student, according to the Colorado Committee on Higher Education. Among Colorado’s four- and two-year colleges, the comparisons aren’t much better.
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