University cuts will damage opportunity in New Mexico
This month, thousands of students will walk across several stages throughout New Mexico as they earn their associate, bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees. It is a time of intense pride for our graduates and their families, many of whom have made significant sacrifices to get to graduation day.
As our state universities continue to face deeper cuts, we are not only hindering many talented students from earning their degrees, but we are also shortchanging the quality of life for all New Mexicans.
Of all the students graduating across the state, a number will be entrepreneurs. Many will be in the health and human services fields. Many will go into the arts. Many will pursue careers in the sciences. And all will have a statistically greater impact on New Mexico’s economy and quality of life than their peers without degrees.
The education of our citizens is the lever to improve all state outcomes. Educated citizens earn higher salaries, pay more taxes, have better health outcomes, commit fewer crimes, require fewer social services, start more successful businesses and are more active in civic life than others.
Until there is a greater focus on overall educational attainment and quality, economic and other important outcomes in the state are not likely to improve. We desperately need more and better jobs in New Mexico, and those outcomes are related to educational attainment. We have significant health disparities in the state and, once again, overall health is strongly predicted by both income and educational attainment. Crime tends to go down as educational attainment goes up. The need for various social services tends to go down as educational attainment rises.
Recently, however, I and all other university presidents in New Mexico were informed that we would receive no state appropriations effective July 1. The many challenges associated with balancing the state budget are well-known and, unless revenues increase from some source, additional legally required cuts must be made to balance the budget. At this point, the solution to balancing the budget is to essentially defund public state universities.
There have been some suggestions that this is perhaps more of a ploy or some political maneuvering than a realistic option, but I would note that such measures have and are being taken right now in other states. For example, public institutions of higher education in Illinois have been essentially without state funding for some time, resulting in, among other things, massive employee layoffs, an exodus of students leaving the state for universities with more reliable state funding, and according to my university president colleagues there, extreme challenges associated with recruiting quality staff, faculty and administrators. Who could possibly be interested in working at a state university with zero state support?
New Mexico can do better. The best solution to face New Mexico’s challenges is to put public education at the very center of our collective efforts. As a nation, we’ve moved from a position that public higher education is important for a free and democratic society to flourish, to a position that higher education is mostly a personal benefit. As a state, we can’t afford to adopt such a line of thinking.