Cutting Education is Nothing New
By Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
Public higher education has been the cut de jour for New Jersey’s governors -- Republicans and Democrats alike. But rather than outcry, they receive accolades. Corzine has emerged as a modern-day Marlboro man for his take-no-shit approach to the budget battle. After McGreevey slashed higher education’s budget in 2002 by five percent, he was invited to receive an honorary degree at the Rutgers graduation. The following year he proposed cuts of almost 12 percent.
“Flunking Out,” a thoroughly depressing report co-authored by Anastasia Mann and Mary Forsberg, would offer no surprises to any Rutgers student or staff member. It shows, in detail, how public education has been consistently cut over the past several years. In terms of budgetary priorities, it’s seemingly somewhere between universal healthcare and raising the income tax. From 1983-2005, funding for public higher education plummeted from almost 10 percent of the state budget to 5.3 percent in 2005, according to the report, published in May by New Jersey Policy Perspective (NJPP).
“The equation borders on perverse: students -- not the state -- pay over half the costs of going to a public college or university in New Jersey,” wrote Mann and Forsberg.
Gov. Christie Whitman deregulated public higher education with the Higher Education Restructuring Act of 1994, which eliminated the Department of Higher Education -- a state cabinet-level agency that regulated New Jersey’s colleges and universities. In its place she created the Commission on Higher Education, which can issue guidelines and suggestions but lacks the authority to implement any policy.
Cutting People, Not Just Dollars
Less money means accepting fewer students. While New Jersey’s nine state colleges and universities reject 75 percent of residents who apply, applications reached an “all-time high” in 2004, according to the report. They received more than 42,000 applications for only 9400 spots.
In the fall of 2001 New Jersey’s public four-year colleges and universities enrolled far fewer students than states of comparable size: almost 22,000 fewer than Virginia; 23,000 fewer than North Carolina; 29,000 fewer than Georgia; and 48,000 fewer than Indiana, according to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.
This budget strangle has particularly affected students of color and low-income families, who typically get shut out when schools have fewer seats. In 2004, 21 percent of New Jersey’s minority students were attending college -- down from 28 percent in 1994, according to the NJPP study.
New Jersey can boast that its “participation gap” between high- and low- income families is “among the widest in the nation,” NJPP report states. New Jersey youth from high-income families are three times more likely to attend college than low-income families. In 2004, a New Jersey public college education cost 34 percent of the poorest families’ yearly income, according to the report. These rising costs have also hit middle-class families hard as well. Few families have a spare $9,958 – the current cost of Rutgers tuition and fees for an in-state student -- to spend a year.
“Though the state has significant wealth, New Jersey’s state subsidy to higher education translates to $5.26 per $1000 of income -- 43rd nationally,” the report found.
Financial Aid
The National Center for Educational Statistics graded New Jersey a “D” for affordability in a nationwide survey. While New Jersey imposes caps on tuition increases, schools are forced to shift the increased costs to mandatory fees. From 2000-01 to 2004-05 tuition and fees grew by 47 percent at New Jersey’s public four-year colleges, according to the report.
Higher tuition and fees don’t necessarily translate to more aid -- just more debt. While the national average for need-based aid increased by 102 percent between 1993-94 to 2003-04, New Jersey’s only increased by 45 percent.
“The state is moving away from need-based aid to merit-based aid, and from grants to loans -- even as research confirms that borrowing hurts students’ academic performance and lowers graduation rates, and that these effects are more pronounced for low-income and minority students,” Mann and Forsberg wrote.
SEE ALSO: Salvaging an Education
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