UConn’s pension predicament

It hurt to read that “UConn faces a $19.6M hole driven by pension costs: School to close deficits by reducing hiring, finding efficiencies” [Page A1, June 12].

This wonderful university and its students should not be penalized by a state that took its employees’ pension contributions from the 1930s to the 1970s and rolled this money into the general fund and spent it.

These contributions should have gone into a pension fund where investments would have grown and the state would have avoided the current financial crisis. This crisis can best be solved by raising state income taxes on those who can afford it. Some wealthy people have offered to pay more; now it is time for the middle class to step up and pay more, too. Please raise my taxes!

My UConn Ph.D. earned me the opportunity to do research in a Boston-area industrial laboratory. Years later I returned to UConn to teach and continue research. The state pension was an important factor in my accepting the UConn position.

Do I live well? Yes, but not nearly as well as my colleagues who remained in industry. I took a serious pay cut to come to UConn, and on retirement my final paycheck, corrected for 37 years of inflation, was less than I started with in industry.

I worked harder for UConn than I ever did in industry. While not the driving force for these efforts, knowing that my pension was there for me and my family helped to keep me at UConn.

Quentin Kessel, Storrs