Cut the budget enough at your flagship state university, and the quality of that university may suffer. Who knew?
The president of the University of Texas at Austin warned Thursday that expected state budget cuts would put the school further behind its peers and could endanger the national standing of some programs.
“We are already behind our competitors by very large amounts,” said William Powers, describing the impact of projected funding cuts to members of UT’s governing board.
Gov. Rick Perry and other state leaders have asked state agencies, including public colleges and universities, to prepare for a 10 percent cut in state funding for the 2012 and 2013 fiscal years.
If enacted, it would cost UT $29 million a year, Powers told regents. That could mean the loss of 600 jobs, stagnant or increased student-faculty ratios and fewer sections of courses students need to graduate, he said.
“This will have an impact on the quality of educational offerings,” he said. “It will affect time to graduation.”
Yeah, but who cares, right? I mean, that ginormous unaffordable property tax cut from 2006 isn’t gonna pay for itself. Everyone has to do their part to make Dan Patrick happy.
Stories like this highlight what a bad idea across-the-board cuts and freezes are. For such things to make sense, you have to assume that all expenses are of equal value. But that’s clearly ridiculous. Since self-proclaimed deficit hawks like to piously intone about how governments must cut back in the same way that households do in tough times, let me ask you: Do you prioritize your expenses when you reduce your personal budget, or do you cut back on groceries in the same way you cut back on discretionary expenses? I don’t know about you, but I go after the things I can live without first. But that requires making difficult decisions, and getting in fights over sacred cows, while mandating a 10% haircut for everyone is easy.
There are many ways of achieving a more nuanced and effective approach to budget cuts. As Rep. Hochberg pointed out, some school districts are much better off than others, and we should use this inequity as a guide for prioritizing cuts. Some programs like CHIP bring money to the state for every dollar spent on them, meaning that cuts to them wind up costing a lot more than what the state actually spends. Some programs should have more money spent on them because they save the state a ton of money over what would be spent on alternatives to them; I’m thinking specifically of diversion programs, and mental health programs, which cost much less and generate much better outcomes than incarceration. We saw this in action in 2003 – cutting these programs cost the state dearly in the long term. Why would we want to make that same mistake?