Two years ago, before the biggest national economic and state budget crisis in generations, Colorado ranked #48 in state support for higher education (per student).   Now we are in the midst of additional cuts to Colorado’s higher education budget that will be at least 20% from the 2006 funding levels, and could easily come closer to 50%.

This matters because most economic development experts and enlightened business leaders understand that a strong higher education sector, with high quality, broad access, and reasonable costs, is a major driver of a state’s economy.  Thus, as the state legislature crafts its budget and as the CCHE starts its required strategic planning process, there are some related points to ponder.

If cuts substantially exceed the known 20% cut already “baked into” the budget, there will have to be some conversations about cutting some institutions, or parts of institutions.  And, perhaps there should be, rather than just deeper across-the-board cuts.  But, we need to keep in mind that Colorado’s higher education system is already ranked #1 or #2 in measures of efficiency – that is, the number of graduates per state dollar spent (see David Longenecker’s presentations using national data).  There isn’t a lot of fat left in this system.

And, let’s also keep in mind that this is a state with a future of large population growth.  We expect to have more college students in the future than we have now.

Furthermore, perhaps the major goal of K12 education reform in Colorado is to expand the number of “college ready” high school graduates.  If we somehow succeed in making progress on that very challenging goal, and a much higher percentage of our 9^th graders actually graduate from high school and aim for higher education, where are we going to put them?

Right now we have about 220,000 students in Colorado higher ed, and while statistics aren’t fully in, it appears that there are probably 10% more this year than last year (due in part to the bad economy and lack of jobs).  High school graduation rates suggest growth in the next 10 years from about 50,000 HS graduates to 60,000 each year in Colorado.  Assume a higher share of those graduates aim for college – again, if we cut capacity in higher ed today, as perhaps we must do to balance budgets, where will we put these students?

An expanded private higher education capacity is certainly a possibility.  But, last week’s articles in the Denver Post cast real doubt on the ability of that sector to produce high quality outcomes – while some new private institutions provide good education and career opportunities, clearly many take advantage of easy federal loans to students and produce little more than more debt for these students.

It is also true that low and declining resources force institutions into decisions and tradeoffs that are far from ideal.  For example, the research evidence is clear that college students are more likely to stay in school if they are taught, in their freshman year, by tenure track, or at least full time faculty members, who have time to mentor them.  And yet, due to limited resources, most institutions employ part-time adjuncts to teach the majority of freshman courses, who don’t have time for mentoring.   We know this isn’t good for achieving our goals of students graduating from college, but we do it anyway, because we have to.

In the end, of course, fixing the funding for higher education requires a larger fix in the state budgetary process.  My strongest hope is that the business community can see enough enlightened self-interest in addressing these issues.   Absent that, we are likely to bounce along at the bottom of the higher ed barrel and miss many opportunities for educating our younger generations of students.

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