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March 4, 2010

College budgets need full review

Dalton Daily Citizen

DALTON — The University System of Georgia is looking at making a number of tough financial decisions, no doubt about it.

According to published reports, the 36 institutions that make up the system have to collectively cut their budgets by more than 20 percent from last year, lowering state funding from $2.08 billion this year to $1.6 billion for next year.

In the face of this cold, hard reality, University System Chancellor Erroll Davis told lawmakers Wednesday that tuition increases and cuts will likely be unavoidable and warned that the quality of public education in the state is at stake.

“The system is acutely aware of the budget situation,” Davis said. “We know we have to play a part ... I will accept reality, whatever that reality is.”

As you look at the proposals on the table for cutting the system’s budget, however, you have to wonder what reality Davis is looking at.

Because it certainly isn’t the same reality that most of us face. If he had any idea of the conversations taking place around many of our kitchen tables, he wouldn’t be mentioning a $1,000 fee increase for all students and increasing tuition next school year by 35 percent.

If the goal is to reduce the budget by running off a lot of people who could no longer afford higher education, then that plan might work, but we doubt that is the goal.

What we and most other Georgians don’t know, however, is what is the goal?

The system released a 142-page document listing all of the proposed cuts that would need to be made to trim an extra $300 million from the system (you can access it at  www.usg.edu/fiscal_affairs/documents/summary_of_reductions.pdf) but has anyone done a thorough study of the system to determine if the cuts really are being made with the people of Georgia in mind?

The system’s priorities ought to be to provide higher education to the citizens of Georgia at an affordable cost and foster research and other programs that directly benefit the citizens and help spur economic development in the state.

If you look at the proposed cuts in those terms, some of the things the system is proposing to do away with are ludicrous.

4-H in Whitfield and Murray counties serves 2,500 school students through a variety of activities and programs and more than 150,000 children throughout the state. Yet one of the very first suggestions you get to in the system’s proposal is to eliminate all 4-H programs at a savings of $6.3 million.

The Archway program through the University of Georgia is making a difference in eight communities, including Dalton, by helping those communities identify growth opportunities and plan for how we can make them happen. It is also proposed to be cut.

Other proposed cuts make sense. You can save money, as a line in the proposed cuts for Georgia Tech suggests, by delaying “repainting and carpet refreshment” projects and telling staff to empty their own trash cans without doing any harm to the core mission of the university.

What this system needs is a thorough head to toe fiscal checkup by people outside of the system. If they say these are the cuts that make the most sense, then so be it, but we don’t think that will happen. 

University systems across the nation have grown exponentially in the last 10-15 years and their leaders are mostly unwilling to give up the comparatively gilded world that they live in — particularly those at the flagship institutions.

What they fail to realize is that this system is paid for by all Georgians and its mission isn’t to serve itself but to serve us.

Institutions of higher learning should be accessible to all of us. Increases in technology and communications make it easier and cheaper to provide the benefits of the system to all of us.

Let’s make sure those things don’t get lost when the budget ax falls in Atlanta.

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