With tuition for college students continuously rising, it was a wonderful feeling to know Gov. Jennifer Granholm put on her cape to save the day. In 2004, Granholm proposed an agreement to keep tuition costs from rising higher than the rate of inflation. In turn, there would be fewer state cuts to higher education.
Yet the funding is still being cut. Under Granholm's 2006 budget proposal, Michigan's 15 public universities and colleges would receive a $30 million base cut in funding this year. That would result in a $5 million elimination from MSU's general operations budget.
Yoo-hoo! Hey! Look over here! Help.
MSU administrators are scratching their heads in an attempt to cut corners and save money. Learning institutions are not simply a never-ending pot from which funding can be continually cut, and this is evident as programs have been slashed.
Some professors no longer supply paper syllabi for classes. Instead, they have posted them online to cutback paper consumption.
The scale that weighs balancing the budget and satisfying wants and needs is a broken one. There's no perfect compromise.
Granholm's Cool Cities initiative is a well-funded program aimed toward attracting young professionals to a given area, yet learning institutions are getting less funding. College graduates and young professionals are one in the same. If living and learning become too expensive for scholars, this will drive the number of prospective students and young professionals down.
Hard times require compromise among the parties involved, but to cut programs from students who are already paying higher tuition just doesn't make sense and should not be considered by the university.
It's as though everyone's looking at their wristwatch wondering "When's the economy going to pick up?" At least Granholm is attempting to create a plan, however many lacerations to funding she might make.
She's in a tight spot trying to please the whole, but due to a suffering state economy, for the third consecutive year, she really has no choice other than the slimming process.
Although her tailoring ways might be provoking, if it's good for the state as a whole, we might have to suck it up and pay more until things look brighter.
