Higher Education Funding Cuts Prompt Public Outcry

Mississippi governor Ronnie Musgrove announced in February that he was reducing state spending on public higher education for fiscal 2001, which ends in June. Cuts made over the course of the year thus far total almost $38 million, or 5.8 percent, according to Pamela Smith, a spokesperson for the Mississippi Board of Trustees of Institutions of Higher Learning. State lawmakers have slashed spending on Mississippi’s public universities by an additional $53 million for the coming fiscal year. The cuts enacted this year have resulted in hiring freezes and reduced travel and equipment purchases, Smith says; further cuts in the next fiscal year will require more drastic measures.

In a letter to the Mississippi Clarion-Ledger, Sherry Laughlin, the president of the faculty senate at the University of Southern Mississippi, urged the legislature to keep higher education as a top priority for fiscal 2002. If budget cuts prompt a declaration of financial emergency, the consequences will be negative and long lasting, Laughlin wrote. And in an open letter posted on the university’s main Web page, University of Southern Mississippi president Horace W. Fleming calls the present situation the most serious he has seen in thirty years. He writes that the threatened budget cuts would cause elimination of faculty and staff positions, tuition increases, and reductions in instructional support, student services, travel, maintenance, and equipment purchases.

Educators in Alabama and Virginia also face cuts. Alabama governor Don Siegelman announced that he was ordering a 6.2 percent reduction in state spending on public education in the fiscal year that began in October. Virginia governor James Gilmore III warned administrators at that state’s public institutions to expect significant cuts. "This is shocking, devastating news," said Timothy Sullivan, the president of the College of William and Mary, after a meeting in February in which officials from the Gilmore administration outlined proposed reductions for each of Virginia’s seventeen public colleges and universities. The cuts in higher education funding were to balance a favorite project of Gilmore’s, a cut in a tax on cars in the state. Although Gilmore later backed off on some of the proposed reductions, Virginia’s colleges and universities still face the probability of building freezes.

Political maneuvering in both Mississippi and Alabama has pitted higher education and K–12 constituencies against each other over the issue of who will bear the brunt of the cuts. So far, K–12 leaders have been more successful at building public support for their cause. "The Mississippi governor and legislature found the money to fund all K–12 education this year, including a 2 percent salary increase," says Pamela Smith.

The depth of the cuts in higher education have prompted protests from those on college campuses. In March three thousand faculty members, administrators, and students gathered in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest Siegelman’s efforts to focus reductions in education spending on higher education. Also in March several hundred students rallied on the campus of Virginia’s George Mason University to protest a projected $17 million rollback in funds earmarked for new buildings at that institution.

State budget shortfalls took people by surprise, and what will happen next is unclear, says Julie Bell of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). A report issued by the NCSL at the end of February showed that the fiscal outlook in many states was less positive than it had been just a few months before. According to the NCSL, forty-four states reported revenue collections at or above forecasted levels in December, but only thirty-one could say the same in February. States with revenue shortfalls are concentrated in the South.

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