Grapevine 2010: A Critical Juncture for Higher Education in the US
 If you're trying to look deep into the crystal ball at the future of support for higher education from the state, the latest Grapevine* report will help clarify the situation, but it isn't pretty. And it seems like nearly everyone is expecting further cuts, not only in the current fiscal year but in the next one.
* Grapevine has compiled data on state tax support for higher education sinde 1960. This year, the Illinois State University's Center for the Study of Higher Education Policy (CSHEP), which manages Grapevine, has joined forces with SHEEO and folded in that organization's State Higher Education Finance (SHEF) project. The collected data is served up in a number of useful ways on the Welcome to Grapevine, Fiscal Year 2009-10 website.
Links Quoted from Lingenfelter: In summary, the dimensions of the current financial and enrollment crisis are: - More than 5% of FY 2010 appropriations are underwritten with federal stabilization funds that in many states are exhausted, or nearly so;
- State revenues have fallen at an unprecedented rate and a recovery will, at best, take many years according to the National Association of State Budget Officers; and
- Even with recent dramatic enrollment growth, current enrollments almost surely understate student demand, with many students who would otherwise enroll deterred by tuition increases and budget‐ driven enrollment caps and course cancellations.
But money and enrollment demand are not the only issues.
Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring: Labels: financial crisis, policy, publics, recession, resource and budget planning, state support
Two-thirds of Public Universities Undertaking Strategic Review of Core Activities Following 2009 Budget Cuts, APLU Survey Reveals
The Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (now known as APLU) has released the results of its survey of member institutions, which are large, public institutions. Its report on the survey is titled Coping Strategics of Public Universities During the Economic Recession of 2009. (Since it officially began in 2007, we think it should be titled The Economic Recession of 2007-2010, but . . . what the heck.) The APLU says: Strategic reviews of core activities are underway or planned by two-thirds of the nation’s public research universities according to a survey of chief academic officers by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (A۰P۰L۰U). The survey focused on depth of budget cuts, strategies to close deficits, and impact on institutions and students at the nation’s 188 public research universities. The full report on the survey is here. Here's a report in the APLU's online newsletter, Public Voice, here's a direct link to the entire survey. Here's a summary of the survey by The Chronicle of Higher Education's Eric Kelderman and here's a summary by Inside Higher Ed's Jack Stripling. Jack wrote: While the survey suggests that some hard choices have already been made by public universities, the long-term solutions indicate universities are still more apt to conduct further reviews than announce permanent changes at this point. Indeed, 67 percent of respondents said they plan a strategic review of administrative structures, compared with just 22 percent that said they plan to permanently change staffing levels for tenured and tenure-track faculty. Labels: APLU, financial crisis, publics, recession, resource and budget planning, survey, universities
The Stimulus (for Campuses) Isn't a Bridge: It's a Short Pier
The New York Times' Education Life issue recently covered a broad range of topics, but a primary focus was on an exploration of the big public universities - the flagships. (This article was authored by Chronicle editor Paul Fain.) It's a must-read. Many worry that they are beginning to resemble elite privates more than is appropriate: At the same time, applications are pouring in from students shut out by the stratospheric cost of private colleges. That’s generally a good thing. Flagships are attracting more wealthy and better-prepared students. Yet as the counterargument goes, a flagship’s traditional mission is to educate its own, especially a state’s low- and middle-income students. The evolution under way is putting some flagships out of reach for the students who were typically enrolled even a decade ago. Each year, the quality of students as well as the budget model skews closer to that of elite private universities. Labels: elite privates, flagship, publics, universities
Stimulus Money Helps Colleges Avoid Slashing Budgets Now, but Big Cuts May Loom
Yes, the stimulus funds are helping, but few expect state budgets to be in much better shape after that money runs out. So, what happens in 2011? "We have a lot of administrators who are talking about retiring by 2012; they don't want to go through whatever's coming." "This year was bleak for state higher-education budgets. But college leaders are even more worried about what comes next.
The billions of dollars in federal stimulus aid to plug shortfalls in state education budgets have helped limit the damage this year, but the money hasn't prevented all of the cuts to college budgets. Most states are spending the bulk of the stimulus money they are receiving for education on elementary and secondary schools, and roughly 20 percent on public colleges. In one state, Wisconsin, none of that federal aid is going to higher education.
And the situation could get worse. Many states are spending all of their education stimulus money to fill gaps in the current and next budget years, leaving nothing for 2011, when many of their economies are still expected to be suffering from the recession.' Read the full article here: http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i39/39a02501.htm
Labels: financial crisis, public institutions, publics, resource and budget planning, states
Tapping State College Research and Development Capacity in Support of State Economic Development
AASCU staffer Daniel Hurley writes in Policy Matters (PDF): Conclusion
Among the direct benefits of state investment in university research and development activities are new business start-ups, job creation, the attraction and retention of highly skilled, highly paid workers, increased tax revenues, and an elevated standing on the national innovation scene. The return on investment of these public tax dollars is accompanied by additional positive impacts derived from this research and technology transfer activity that benefit society as a whole, such as improvements in health care, the environment, transportation, and public safety.
In their efforts to implement a broad economic development strategy that includes applied research and product commercialization activities, state policymakers, in partnership with the private sector, should seek to tap the full potential of all four-year state colleges and universities. The extent to which individual regional state colleges are involved in applied research and entrepreneurial support activities varies greatly. Collectively, however, these institutions make a meaningful contribution to states’ overall economic development agendas. Granting all public postsecondary institutions the opportunity to participate in state-funded research and development grant programs, lending legislative and public policy support to facilitate state colleges’ efforts to attract, retain and expand businesses and industry clusters, and tapping the full slate of intellectual resources offered by university scientists will enhance states’ capacity to increase their competitiveness in the knowledge-age economy. Labels: economic development, policy, publics, research
Conceiving a New Agenda for Public Higher Education
This reporting is by Doug Lederman in Inside Higher Ed: Gerald L. Baliles was most of the way through his speech Monday, delivered to nods of affirmation from the state higher education officials, public college trustees and others in the audience, when he threw the assembled a curveball. . . . Baliles, a former governor of Virginia and now director of the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs, was expressing the dual views that state and national politicians too often fail to recognize the value of American higher education (as college and university officials frequently argue, usually when seeking more government funds), and that higher education as an industry is too slow to adapt to changes in society and to those it purportedly serves, as critics often accuse. . . . “The point is that higher education is essential and that it is at risk in a time of change,” Baliles said. That’s when he dropped his punchline. [Emphasis SCUP's.] The words Baliles had just finished reading were not a fresh speech about the current state of higher education; they came from a letter he had written 15 years ago to introduce a report on educational quality from the Southern Regional Education Board. . . . The issues that the group had gathered to wrestle with—concerns about affordability, access, quality and accountability that college leaders and politicians have been discussing intensely for the last few years—have been around for ages. And relatively little progress has been made in attacking them, in part because the many words that have been spilled on the subjects have not been sufficiently transformed into actions. Labels: policy, publics
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