Budget cuts would do irreparable harm
An open letter to Governor Ned Lamont on UConn’s budget: We write to you as endowed chairs and as distinguished professors at the University of Connecticut to express our deep alarm over the drastic budget cuts proposed for UConn. This severe draining of resources from academic units at the university will inflict permanent, irreparable harm to the Research-1 standing of the flagship university of the state of Connecticut and threatens its accreditation in the long run. The proposed budget cuts would destroy graduate programs and high-level research and scholarship in nearly all departments in the university and eventually its well-known sports programs. That in turn will have a direct impact on students of all levels. Last year, West Virginia imposed devastating cuts on its flagship public university. We now risk following them in a disastrous race to the bottom, jeopardizing UConn’s national and international reputation and risking its imminent inclusion into the list of AAU prestigious public and private research universities.
When we accepted endowed positions and distinguished professorships at UConn, we hardly imagined this dystopian future for our university. The losses any individual unit may accrue, however, pale before these self-inflicted wounds to the university and its academic standing. It undermines the land grant mission of the university, an obligation going back to the post-Civil War era, to serve all people of the state, some of whom would not otherwise enjoy access to top quality higher education. And it undermines our ability to continue to provide research which has ethical value and economic impact.
A tragic dismantling of the University of Connecticut’s academic reputation would needlessly undermine our recent achievements. As is well known, UConn has trained more than half the state’s engineers and
many of its professionals whether they be educators, lawyers, doctors, dentists, nurses, public health professionals, entrepreneurs, to name just a few. Successful UConn graduates are critical to all sectors of the state’s economy. Reduction in future talent supply may cause businesses to start looking elsewhere for talent or lead them to simply uproot and move away. Yet the state expects UConn to accelerate growth of its educational programs in manufacturing, biotechnology, health and big data analytics to support the explosive needs of these industries for skilled workers.
An investment in the University of Connecticut is an investment in the state and in the people of Connecticut, and it is one that yields the highest rewards, far beyond the economic multiplier effect that is evident from the previous statements and the undisputed role of the flagship research university in generating jobs and investments in the state.
The federal government has recently awarded a large grant for a Quantum Computer project to UConn and Yale University in partnership. Note that UConn is an equal partner, and our research chops are no less than that of Yale even though we operate with significantly fewer resources. The federal government recognizes the research excellence at UConn, and we strongly urge our state government to continue to do the same. Unlike Massachusetts, which has several Research-1 universities, the state of Connecticut has only two: a private tax-exempt, well-endowed institution, Yale, that serves a tiny minority; and UConn that, by contrast, serves most of the people of Connecticut and provides a significant avenue of social mobility for its citizens.
As leading faculty members at the University of Connecticut, we are appalled at this dangerous undermining of the state’s educational crown jewel — its flagship university. And in good faith, we want the university’s administration and the state government to be aware of the irreversible consequences of the budget cuts on the university’s viability as a premier research institution, currently ranked No. 9 among public universities by The Wall Street Journal. These dire consequences compel us to implore the state’s political leadership to look before they leap into the abyss.