A $12-million cut to the state higher-education budget approved Thursday
by the House Finance Committee will devastate academic programs and
almost certainly result in steep tuition hikes, according to officials
at the three colleges and members of the Board of Governors for Higher
Education.
The House proposal, which appears to ignore concerns raised by college
leaders during budget hearings this spring, and even agreements from
previous years, would allocate $169.5 million to higher education.
That's about $5 million less than the current year's budget, $12 million
less than Governor Almond had proposed, and $19 million less than the
Board of Governors had requested.
The House Finance Committee directed higher-education officials to cut
costs to make up about half of the difference. The rest, it advised,
should be raised through tuition hikes.
Using enrollment figures that all three schools said are inflated, and
miscalculating how much money Rhode Island College and the Community
College of Rhode Island can raise through tuition hikes, the committee
said a "roughly 2-percent greater increase" would do the trick.
But William R. Holland, commission of higher education, said in reality
"double-digit tuition hikes" might be necessary.
Already, the Board of Governors had approved a 5.3-percent tuition hike
at the University of Rhode Island, to $3,770 for in-state students, plus
$1,990 in mandatory fees. RIC's tuition was going up by 4.5 percent, to
$2,990, and CCRI was poised to boost its in-state tuition by 1.4
percent, to $1,688.
The very notion of telling the colleges to raise tuition is a change
from legislators' long-standing insistence that students not be burdened
with their schools' budget woes.
But in this case, college officials said, the suggestion is ludicrous.
Sure, tuition hikes are likely. But at CCRI, for example, which has to
close a $2.7-million gap, an extra 2-percent tuition hike would produce
only $380,000, so to make a real dent, the school would have to look at
an increase in the double digits, President Thomas Sepe said.
URI faces a $5.7-million gap. But URI Budget Director Linda Barrett said
a 2-percent tuition hike would raise less than $2.5 million, or $1.8
million after adjusting the financial-aid budget.
For poor students, who qualify for extensive financial aid, Sepe said,
the harm would be "marginal." But for those just wealthy enough to be
ineligible for grants, the jump could be enough to force them to leave
school, he said.
"It's a spiraling effect of raising tuition, losing enrollment, and
getting a bigger hole, if you're not careful," Sepe said.
Lenore A. DeLucia, vice president for finance and administration at RIC,
figured it would take a 15.5-percent tuition hike to close her school's
$2.9-million budget shortfall. That, she said, would be unconscionable.
"The last thing we want to do is put the cost of higher education on the
backs of the students," she said. "They should pay a portion of the
cost, but this is just a phenomenal number."
SO WHAT is the alternative?
At all three schools, and at the Office of Higher Education, every
dollar in the fiscal 2003 budgets is coming under scrutiny. Already, in
response to directives issued by the governor last winter, travel
allocations had been cut, purchases canceled, renovations delayed. Now,
what little had survived will go.
But in the big picture, those are tiny sums. As Sepe noted, the vast
majority of the colleges' budgets goes to personnel -- mostly tenured
professors and staff with union contracts. The schools can freeze
hiring, but laying off employees isn't feasible, he said -- it wouldn't
save enough money, plus the schools need the people they have.
"It's virtually impossible to cut 80 percent of your budget," Sepe said,
"so you have to look at programs and services."
By yesterday afternoon, Sepe and his staff had made up a list of
potential cuts. Most of CCRI's new initiatives were on it.
There's the developmental education program, which tests incoming
students and provides remediation and counseling as needed.
There's a new pharmacy technology program slated to start this year, and
a training program for people who run children's residential facilities.
There's the Quonset Point job-training center, which CCRI officials
believe can pay for itself within a year, but would require an
investment upfront that Sepe isn't sure he can still afford.
And nursing and allied health programs -- fast-growing, but costly --
would have to be trimmed. Sepe figures he would cut 80 nursing slots, 12
in radiography, 112 for emergency-medical technicians.
"It's just unfortunate that in the years I've been here, the focus has
been to create programs that stimulate the economy and put people into
jobs, and this just shuts down the thrust of that," Sepe said. "It's a
rather short-sighted solution" to the state's budget crunch.
AT URI, Barrett said she's trying to make "as little impact as possible"
on students. But the shortfall is so big, she said, that students
"absolutely" will feel the hit, "no matter what we do."
DeLucia, at RIC, spoke in similar terms, warning that despite her best
efforts, "the total cuts they're talking about will have serious
repercussions throughout the institution."
Both Barrett and DeLucia are veterans of another higher-education budget
crisis, in the early 1990s, and their awareness of the long-term effects
of that period troubles them even more.
"It takes you years to recover," DeLucia said. RIC put off virtually all
building renovations and equipment purchases and ended up with such a
"huge backlog," she said, that it's only now catching up.
Yet another challenge, officials said, is that the House Finance
Committee directed the colleges to cut a total of 200 unfilled jobs. To
make things worse, legislators reversed a policy decision to exclude
federally financed positions from the job cap.
That means that if URI tries to compensate for its cuts by getting more
federal grants, it may not be able to fill the jobs it finances. Ditto
for CCRI and any work-force development grants.
"I don't understand the rationale," Sepe said. "It's almost like a
punishment" for trying to get outside money.
Yesterday, Higher Education Commissioner Holland wrote to legislative
leaders urging them to reverse the job-cap decision and spare the
colleges at least $4 million of the proposed cut.
"Much of the progress achieved by Higher Education in the last few years
currently hangs in the balance," he wrote. "Unfortunately, some of this
progress will be significantly reversed if money is not restored."
