FYI: Forty percent of McDonald’s profits come from the sales of Happy Meals.
• THE METROPOLITAN • APRIL 9, 2009 • METRO • A7
$LA$HED • THE BUDGET CRISIS
Jordan: cuts will be deep
Tuition hike,
cuts to COF will
leave students
with brunt of bill
By Andrew Flohr-Spence
spencand@mscd.edu
The news for colleges and uni-
versities in Colorado sounded like a
bad joke on April 1, but “April Fool’s”
never followed. The Joint Budget
Committee, in an effort to balance
next year’s state budget, slashed
funding for higher education by
another $300 million. The cuts in
higher-education funding now total
$452 million, which is more than a
50 percent reduction from the cur-
rent $770 million budget.
Totalled, a full-time student could
pay double for college this fall semes-
ter, and hundreds of instructors face
losing their jobs.
“Unfortunately, cutting funding
from higher education is the way we
can balance the budget,” Rep. Mark
Ferrandino, D-Denver, said. “In the
next year, we as a state will only be
able to maintain funding for higher
education, not increase it.”
To survive the cuts, larger
schools, such as Metro, the Univer-
sity of Colorado, Colorado State Uni-
versity and the Colorado School of
Mines may need to lower the number
of enrolled students by as much as
25 percent, and many smaller state
schools, community colleges and sat-
ellite schools, may be forced to close
completely.
“We are looking at a very dif-
ferent world next semester,” Metro
President Stephen Jordan said. “We
have to look now at how to become a
very focused institution, and how to
go about implementing that.”
Jordan said the cuts would hurt
Metro but the college was relatively
lucky. “There are a number of in-
stitutions that can’t navigate those
kinds of budget reductions and cer-
tainly not within one year,” he said.
Metro will possibly receive $17
million in state funding next year,
compared to $44 million this year.
Jordan said his office was looking at
several scenarios to cope with the
loss of money and he would work
with students, faculty and staff to
get their input on the difficult process
ahead.
One option is reducing enrollment
at Metro by up to 5,000 students.
However, Colorado Statute establishes
Metro as an open-enrollment institu-
tion and restricting the number of
students enrolled would mean chang-
ing the law. Jordan said to survive the
new budget, cutting enrollment would
have to be an option.
Another option is tuition could
see a 53 percent increase, Jordan said.
Normally, this would violate Colorado
HOW
$60 LOW WILL IT GO?
$50
Budget in millions
$40
$30
$20
$10
03-04
04-05
law, but the Legislature has allowed
state colleges to exceed a 7 percent
annual increase in tuition, the maxi-
mum allowed by current law.
This fall, students could get a
double-hit to the wallet: the Colorado
Opportunity Fund, or COF, has been
reduced by nearly 70 percent, leav-
ing students to pay for most of their
tuition.
Reductions in staff would be
made to retain tenured professors,
but because full-time professors
mean higher costs for the school,
that would mean raising the tuition
or lowering the number of students.
“You can’t sustain the institu-
tion— we have now and make $29
million in budget cuts— and expect
you’re going to have full-time employ-
ees and full-time staff unless there is
Metro’s state funding
Projected budget as of July 1, 2008
$49,644,910
Not since the 1978-79
fiscal year has Metro been
funded at the proposed level.
Then the school received
$1,085 per student. Next year
the school could receive $1,160
per student.
Proposed budget as of April 9, 2009
$17,357,163
06-07
07-08
05-06
Fiscal Year
a give somewhere,” Jordan said.
He will meet with the Faculty
Senate to give them an update and
get their feedback.
“Huge cuts like these will take
the state of Colorado pretty much
out of the business of funding higher
education,” Faculty Senate President
Lynn Kaersvang said. “If this goes
through … there will be a decrease
in availability of college … which will
undermine the concept of accessible
higher education in the state.”
One catch to the cuts is Colorado
will not meet the requirements for
the federal stimulus money, which
require states to make an effort to
maintain 2004-2005 funding lev-
els. But lawmakers have told Jordan,
Colorado can get an exemption to the
rule.
Ó Fall 2008:
Metro gave back $9M
Ì during fiscal year 08-09
Ë Fall 2009 with a
08-09
09-10
“We are looking at doing every-
thing possible to prevent the citizens
of the state of Colorado to miss out
on the opportunities of the federal
stimulus money,” Gov. Bill Ritter’s
spokesman, Evan Dreyer, said.
Ritter has spent the past two
years trying to improve higher edu-
cation funding, Dreyer said, and con-
tinues to work to avoid cutting the
proposed $300 million.
While the governor respects the
committee’s decision, Ritter will
work with them in the next weeks to
see if an alternative that would pre-
vent further decreases in funding can
be found, Dreyer said.
“Everything’s in flux right now.
It’s an out-of-focus picture right now.
We’ll have to take another snapshot
in a week or so and see how things
“Double our
tuition, now
we’re bitchin’.”
College students from
around the state gathered
on the west steps of the
Capitol April 6 to protest
the additional $300 million
cuts lawmakers are propos-
ing to the state budget. All
the cuts would come out
of the higher-education
budget.
Photo by Leah Millis •
lmillis@mscd.edu
TUITION:
A CASE STUDY
12 credit hours
$2,411.40
12 credit hours
Fall 2009 with a
7 percent increase:
$2,580.24
12 credit hours
Fall 2009 with a
30 percent increase:
$3,134.88
12 credit hours
53 percent increase:
$3,689.40
look. Everything continues to move
and change,” Dreyer said.
The cuts would put higher educa-
tion funding in Colorado at by far the
lowest in the nation, with less than
$2,000 spent per student compared
to the national average of more than
$7,000.
“I think people don’t really un-
derstand the full magnitude, yet,”
Jordan said. He urged all students
and staff to get involved and call
their state representatives, and said
his staff and Metro’s Board of Trust-
ees would be working tirelessly in the
coming months to get funding re-
turned to higher education, but time
was of the essence.
“This is a long process,” Jordan
said. “It’s like Yogi Berra said, ‘It ain’t
over ‘til it’s over.’”