Higher Ed Budget Uninspired

Count me among the many North Dakotans who raised their eyebrows last month when state higher education leaders requested a $250 million funding increase for their 2009-11 budget cycle. That’s 57 percent more than their current base budget.

This was a bold move, to put it mildly. I had to read the news story twice, thinking surely I had misunderstood it the first time.

This budget request troubles me on three levels. First, it is selfish. It calls for devoting about half of the state’s revenue surplus (as projected today) toward higher education, leaving all other state functions like caring for the elderly and disabled, K-12 education, law enforcement, infrastructure, or even tax relief, to share the rest.

When I was a child, my parents gave me and my seven siblings one box of sweet cereal to share on Saturday mornings. We rushed to the kitchen to get our fair share. Similarly, higher ed rushed to the table and helped themselves to almost half the box.

Professors would receive a 14 percent raise, or more in some cases. Meanwhile, people who care for our developmentally disabled citizens – a job that requires incredible compassion and patience -- might be lucky to receive any pay increase.

Second, this budget request is uninspired. College inflation has increased at almost twice the rate of inflation nationally since 1982. Over the last 20 years, state funding for higher education in North Dakota has increased 86 percent or 4.3 percent each year. Again, well exceeding inflation in all but three of those years.

Over that same time period, tuition at UND, my alma mater, has increased more than 300 percent.

For our University System to request a 57 percent budget increase represents more of the same … on hyper drive. What is the justification for these steady and significant increases? Why should we devote a majority of the state’s potential budget surplus to one function?

To be fair, the University System did request measures to “Maintain Student Affordability,” such as a $14 million increase for needs-based financial aid and another $12.5 million to support two and four-year college affordability.

This is similar to Hillary Clinton’s solution to increase government funds for Pell Grants and provide tax credits for families who pay for college. These ideas make more money available to help families pay the expensive college bills, but they do nothing to address rising costs.

In fact, these solutions accept higher-than-inflation cost increases as inevitable and provide more government funding that will likely ensure the trend continues.

What’s missing, I believe, is evidence that college administrators in North Dakota are making every effort to restrain cost increases -- which leads to my final frustration. This budget request shows very little evidence of restraint or prioritization.

It’s difficult to argue that campuses are so far behind in funding that a 56 percent increase is justified when, as just one small example, both UND and NDSU are constructing new, million-dollar homes for their presidents.

I realize these homes are being paid for by a generous private donation. But who’s to say the donor wouldn’t have given the same amount for a different, more student-related purpose like constructing a new science lab or updating computers.

My husband and I are planning to pay for our children to attend college at a state school. I always considered this goal rather reasonable. In recent years, I have learned otherwise. This “reasonable” expectation called for us to begin saving $635 per month, every month, beginning in January 2006 (when two of our three kids were still in diapers) until 2026.

If costs continue rising as projected, the year 2023 could find all of us eating Ramen noodles and instant oatmeal cooked in a hotpot. That’s the year we’ll face a $75,000 bill to cover their tuition and expenses for one year at UND.

Parents today who want to pay for part or all of their children’s college education need to plan decades ahead. They have to work harder, do without the newest or the best, or sometimes simply do without.

That same spirit is sorely missing from the North Dakota University System’s recent budget request.