Mike Pence, Indiana’s recently elected governor, published an editorial in March 22 Journal & Courier proposing a 10 percent, “across the board” cut in state income taxes. He claimed that this tax cut would put money back into households that can better spend it than government. State financial reserves remain flush, he said, because of the wise management of public funds of Mitch Daniels, the prior governor and now Purdue University president, and the state legislature.
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All of these benefits provided by public institutions are in danger of being destroyed by the tax cutters, the privatizers, and the deregulators, such as reflected over the last decade in policies instituted by governors and legislatures in states like Indiana.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities recently issued a report on the devastating consequences of these policy shifts on one public sector higher education (“Recent Deep State Higher Education Cuts May Harm Students and the Economy for Years To Come”). One example has been the 28 percent cut per student in state expenditures on higher education over the last five years in all 50 states. Eleven states cut their support for higher education by more than one-third. In Gov. Daniels’ Indiana, higher education funding declined by 17.2 percent — $1,240 per student — between fiscal year 2008 and 2013.
In response to declining state support for higher education, tuition increases since 2007-08 have exceeded 27 percent nationally. (In Indiana tuition has risen by 15.1 percent or $1,142 per student). Many colleges and universities have cut teaching staff, increased class size, reduced course and program offerings, shut down computer and library facilities and eliminated branch campuses.
Debates abound in state legislatures about the impacts of recession on public financing of higher education. Legitimate arguments are raised about the pattern of bloated and unnecessary administrative expansion in colleges and universities and administrative salaries that are extraordinarily out of line with the norms of public service.
But there is a deeper meaning to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report, the Pence proposed tax cuts and the downsizing of support for public-supported higher education. That is, powerful economic and political actors, representing what the Occupy movement called the 1 percent and their allies among traditional conservatives and right-wing populists, are on a campaign to destroy public institutions, which for the most part serve the interests of the vast majority of the population of the United States.
http://www.jconline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2013303270027
