Fresh Round of State Budget Cuts Hits Higher Education - Chro...

As in the previous fiscal year, when 29 states had to close budget gaps totaling $48-billion, public colleges and universities are sharing across-the-board budget cuts with the multiple agencies that compete for state funds, like prisons, elementary and secondary schools, and health care.

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Gov. Deval L. Patrick of Massachusetts, a Democrat, has told public colleges and universities they will lose 5.6 percent of their state funds to help cover a budget gap that has reached $143-million in the first quarter of the fiscal year.

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In Pennsylvania, tax revenue is nearly 5 percent below projections for the current fiscal year, and Gov. Edward G. Rendell, a Democrat, is proposing to cut more than $50-million, about 4.25 percent, from public college and university budgets.

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In Virginia, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, a Democrat, has asked higher-education institutions to pare from 5 percent to 7 percent of their state funds as part of an effort to close an estimated $2.5-billion budget shortfall.

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In Utah, higher-education funds are being cut by about 4 percent, or $33-million, at a time when enrollment in the state's colleges and universities has risen nearly 9 percent.

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A report last week from the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public-policy research arm of the State University of New York, warns that tax collections in many states could fall even further this year, making a bad fiscal situation even worse for much of the nation. While state income-tax collections in the second quarter of 2008 were 6.6 percent higher than they were for the same period in 2007, state sales-tax revenue dropped 1.4 percent, corporate income-tax collections fell 8.3 percent, and motor-fuel taxes declined by 3.4 percent, according to the institute’s analysis.

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