The governor’s new budget cuts funding for state universities by 3% and then she has the audacity to demand that states freeze tuition. Yes this is a time of recession, yes everything has to be cut. But the general budget has been cut by 1.5% while funding for state universities has been cut 3%, double the cuts to everything else. That’s 3% out of an education budget that is already the nation’s most pathetic. And after decades of betrayal by Lansing, higher education is now once again the first thing on the state chopping-block. And don’t tell me Michigan has to spend so little on education because it has been mired in a recession for years. First of all, that’s all the more reason that we need to educate our next generation, but second of all, Michigan is still far from the poorest state in the country. We rank 35th out of the 50 states by GDP per capita. State universities have had no choice but to increase tuition as state funding has plummeted. If the state continues to abandon universities, those universities have no choice but to raise their own funds.
Update: Other programs weren’t cut at all. It looks like this is just a matter of misplaced priorities.