Presidents at Colorado colleges and universities say they are disappointed Gov. Bill Ritter’s plan to direct funding to higher education focuses solely on scholarships.
While saying they support making college more affordable, presidents and financial chiefs also said they need money that will go directly to the schools to fill their financial needs.
Ritter’s initiative would, if passed in November, devote money from an increased tax on the oil and gas industry to scholarships.
“This proposal does nothing to address (our) general fund,” said Steve Jordan, president of Metropolitan State College of Denver, who wants to hire dozens more tenure-track faculty.
The severance tax increase would bring about $200 million a year to the state, enough to aid about 60 percent of the college-age students in Colorado with their tuition, backers of the plan estimate.
Eligibility for the program, called Colorado Promise Scholarships, would likely be based on income and grades.
Choosing between scholarships and the schools themselves is difficult, presidents acknowledge.
“It’s sort of a Hobson’s choice,” Jordan said.
The president of the University of Colorado said he doesn’t plan to campaign on behalf of the measure because he needs to focus on bringing money to the school.
“I’m not opposing him (Ritter), but I’ve got a lot of work to do for this institution,” Bruce Benson said. “I told the governor that we’re short operating money. . . . We need to run our schools here; I really wanted operating money.”
CU’s per-pupil funding went down by $1,457 from 2002 to 2008, from $7,541 six years ago to $6,084 now for 34,792 in-state students attending one of its four campuses.
Others say that Colorado’s undistinguished 50th-in-the-nation ranking in tuition and state funding has forced them to sacrifice quality — including supporting first-generation students, hiring tenure-track faculty and building top-notch programs.
“If there’s no money to fund the faculty, then we’ll have a degradation in the quality of the school,” Jordan said. “We all thought the severance tax would be that source for higher education. . . . It does leave you scratching your head.”
The governor’s office said Tuesday that the decision to funnel money to a scholarship fund came after wrenching discussions.
Presidents said the decision, made at the last minute last week, took them by surprise.
“It just felt to him (Gov. Ritter) like the right thing to do at this time,” Ritter spokesman Evan Dreyer said.
The governor has given boosts to university and colleges in the past two budget cycles, including $65.8 million for this coming year.
“We have an equal responsibility to the students as we do to the institutions themselves. We are making progress when it comes to the institutions,” Dreyer said. “We’re going to continue to look for opportunities.”
David Longanecker thinks the plan is “brilliant.”
The executive director of the Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education said voters would think higher education was “taken care of” if they approved the initiative in November and it went directly to schools.
“I think there would be a danger that if this was for higher education, people would say, ‘ah, good,’ the rest can go to corrections or transportation or whatever,” he said. “This is a way of protecting the most needy students from the tuition increases.”
A recent national study put Colorado more than $700 million behind its peer institutions in annual funding.
Nancy McCallin, president of the Community College System, said that she’s grateful for any help for her students but that “there continues to be problems when we are dead last in the nation in terms of funding. . . . At this point in time, we need money for operating our schools.”
The rules for the Colorado Promise Scholarships, which will be modeled after programs in Georgia and Wyoming, will be crafted this summer by the Colorado Department of Higher Education.
If passed, the initiative would take effect next year.
The department’s executive director, David Skaggs, said students likely would have to maintain a 2.5 GPA to remain eligible for their scholarships, and most of them would not be full rides.
“I would pray to have something in shape before the election season,” he said.
Allison Sherry: 303-954-1377 or asherry@denverpost.com
This article has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to a reporting error, it incorrectly characterized the University of Colorado’s per-pupil funding. It went down by $1,457 from 2002 to 2008, from $7,541 six years ago to $6,084 now.
