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Montana University system, state are at the same financial crossroads

As a tight-fisted Legislature continues to increase financial pressure on the Montana university system, there are differing views among administrators of the system on how to respond.

Great Falls Tribune

It’s not exactly a house divided; rather it’s a family whose members exhibit different degrees of resignation.

The state hasn’t increased what it pays for the system in a decade, even though enrollments and costs have increased substantially, and despite growing evidence that the quality of higher ed is directly linked to the quality of the economy.

To make up for the lack of funding, operations have been tightened and, mostly, tuition and fees have been increased dramatically. Just this week in Great Falls, the governing Board of Regents approved more tuition increases of almost $40 million over the next two years (see inset).

The presidents of the two biggest universities — Montana State University in Bozeman and the University of Montana in Missoula — joined forces to recommend the increases.

There’s no denying the trend: Montana’s (and most other states’) university system increasingly is viewed as a private system that gets some state support.

Carroll Krause, the acting commissioner of higher education, said the state and student shares of the rising cost of education have changed places — it was 70 percent state- and 30 percent student-funded in the past, but now it’s just about the other way around.

Underlying that trend is the growing belief that the degrees being achieved by students are "private goods" being purchased by the students (and their banks), not the state.

Long-time UM President George Dennison was among the first to publicly point out these trends. He wasn’t exactly sounding an alarm, because he doesn’t necessarily view privatization as a bad thing.

But he has been constant in urging state leaders and citizens to sit up and take notice of the trend and to determine whether it’s what they really want.

We agree with him, to the point of pleading.

Relative newcomer Geoff Gamble at MSU, meanwhile, acknowledges the decline in the share the state pays for higher education, but he views it as more of a fait accompli.

The trend has been occurring — nationwide — for 20 years or more, he says, and it constitutes nothing more than the reality of modern public university administration.

Whatever the reasons for it, we think it’s shortsighted and harmful to the overall well being of the state and its citizens.

Both presidents say that the state can be proud of the quality of its institutions of higher education, but that we are near the point of diminishing returns.

As salaries fall farther behind national norms, Montana’s scenery and recreational opportunities — worth a lot to all Montanans, not just college professors — will become less fungible with cash on the barrelhead.

As that happens, the high-quality instructors who have guided Montana students to a disproportionate share of national honors and awards over the years will begin to drift away.

This year MSU alone has lost five deans, two to retirement but three to better-paying positions in other states. It gets harder and harder to fill these and other faculty positions.

The fear is that a vicious cycle has begun: tuition at a point where some Montana students are shut out; faculty salaries so far behind that maintaining quality is a problem; and an economy that is digging itself deeper and deeper into a hole.

What’s needed is a way to break the cycle, and the one way that seems obvious to us is for the state to better fund higher education — even if it means slighting or even forgoing temporarily some of the other things state government provides.

For that to happen, a statewide dialogue is needed — just like UM President Dennison has been advocating — before the 2005 Legislature takes the next step in that downward spiral.

(Tomorrow: A new study underscores the link between higher education and a well-trained work force.)

http://www.greatfallstribune.com/news/stories/20030602/opinion/406740.html

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