Category: legislative relations

Uncertain future for America’s public research universities

If past is prologue to the future, then the recent past for America’s public research universities should be a cause for concern.

According to a National Science Board report released this week, the past decade has been a tough one for public research universities in the United States. This is no news flash for most of us in higher ed, especially those of us employed by public research universities. Still, the extent of the decline in state support over the past several years is troubling.

This study of the nation’s 101 major public research universities — those an Associated Press report calls “the pride and backbone of American higher education, doing essential research and educating en masse the next generations of scientists and engineers” — finds that state per-student funding has declined by an average of 20 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars between 2002 and 2010. Ten states experienced declines ranging from 30 to as high as 48 percent.

This AP map shows the state-by-state decline in funding for the U.S.’s top public research universities.

What will happen if the nation’s public research universities continue to wither away? Since the post-Sputnik era, public research universities have become some of the nation’s most important centers of innovation, scientific discovery and economic development.

Yes, public institutions must find a way to become more efficient and control costs. And yes, states aren’t the only source of funding for research universities. Perhaps by necessity, institutions are looking to corporate and business interests for more support for research, but those dollars often come with strings attached. Applied research for companies is often tied to specific corporate interests. Federal dollars, a resource for more exploratory research in the past, have also become more tightly controlled, and a significant chunk of federal funding is expected to go away next January. That’s when some $500 billion in Defense Department funding may evaporate if sequestration takes effect. Those cuts would reverberate across the U.S. — our universities, as well as our military-industrial complex.

A case must be made that public funding that supports public higher education is an investment in our future, not a cost. If not, then the future may look even bleaker for public higher education.

On August 15, don’t forget ed

This Wednesday, Aug. 15, the College Board‘s campaign to draw attention to higher education, Don’t Forget Ed, kicks into high gear.

The timing is not coincidental. The start of the fall semester just around the corner, and so are the national conventions of the two major political parties. And the goal of the “Don’t Forget Ed” campaign is to get both presidential candidates to pay attention to education.

Getting politicians to pay attention to education may sound simple, but it’s actually a pretty ambitious goal, given everything else on the national agenda. So that’s why the Don’t Forget Ed campaign needs our help.

What can you do? For starters, watch the video (also embedded below). Then go to the website to learn more about how you can help. Then, add your voice to the cause. Finally, on Aug. 15, join in on the Don’t Forget Ed social media rally on Twitter and Facebook. Follow @DontForgetEd on Twitter and use the #dontforgeted hashtag to spread the word about this effort. Let’s show our presidential candidates — and the world — just how the #highered community can rally. If we did it to help some of our own win a cross-country tweetrace, then surely we can band together for the future of education in our nation, right?