The money's as good as gone.

With Republican lawmakers consenting to Gov. Jennifer Granholm's plan to eliminate budget shortfall in the state on Wednesday, Michigan's public universities and community colleges stand to lose $30 million in state funding.

The likely cuts, which will eliminate $5 million from MSU's general operating budget, are hard to accept. After all, public universities and community colleges have received funding cuts of at least 14 percent in the past two years. It's getting more and more difficult to envision a situation where we actually receive adequate funding from the state, which has had budgetary woes for quite a while now.

Despite these woes, continued cutting to institutions of higher learning will only put the state in worse condition. As tuition rates increase, less people will attend college. As helpful programs are axed, the quality of education students receive is diminished. The cutting must stop somewhere.

MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon recently stated that the state needs to start taking more responsibility for the education of its citizens.

"Higher education is being seen more and more as something to be paid for by students and their families than to be paid for by the state," Simon said, adding that the right thing to do is "change the tone for the future."

This is an admirable thing for the university president to say, but The Associated Press reported Wednesday that Simon is pleased with the budget agreement, saying that she believes the state will be committed to giving higher education more money in the future.

With the cuts we've continuously received in past years, that seems hard to imagine. Although these latest cuts are essentially unavoidable at this point, MSU needs to send a clear message that this is the last straw. Additional funding cuts in coming years are unacceptable.