WHEN THEY RUN OUT OF OTHER PEOPLES' MONEY.

Illinois is not the only state that is going to learn, the hard way, that fiat money from Washington isn't real money.  "Connecticut is the latest state where higher ed leaders and lawmakers are clashing over state funding as federal COVID relief money runs out and enrollments struggle to recover from the pandemic."

Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system president Terrence Cheng warned that the state Legislature’s latest budget proposal would be “devastating” for the system.

Cheng said the budget, proposed early last month by the Senate Appropriations Committee, would create a $335 million shortfall and force the 17-campus system to prepare for mass layoffs, tuition hikes and potentially even campus closures. Specifically, he said CSCU would need to let go at least 650 full-time employees, including 200 faculty positions, and consider eliminating the jobs of at least another 1,000 part-time staff and adjuncts.

The finger-pointing has begun.

In a statement released after the news conference, Jeffrey Beckham, secretary of Connecticut’s Office of Policy and Management, pushed back on Cheng’s grim assessment of the budget. He said it actually represented a 27 percent increase in baseline funding and a near doubling of funding per student. If CSCU leaders were forced to implement cost-cutting measures, he added, they shouldn't blame lawmakers; rather, they should look at revamping their own strategic plan.

“Simply asking for ever-increasing operating subsidies is not sustainable,” he wrote. “The students and taxpayers deserve value for their dollar; it is apparent that the CSCU administration needs to do more to assure that value.”

In common with Illinois, Connecticut (run by Democrats, it should go without saying) maintained that illusion of fiscal responsibility with those Biden bucks.

CSCU leaders and faculty disagree. They argue that federal aid money allocated under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), among other temporary federal funds, filled the hole left by a 9.2 percent decrease in state appropriations in the last budget—the largest decline in higher ed funding of any state in 2022—which would essentially take effect when that federal COVID-19 relief money runs out.

Combine the grand fiction of attempting to live at somebody else's expense with the permanence of a temporary agreement and pass the popcorn!

The Senate’s latest budget, Cheng added, would make even sustaining this already thinned-out workforce impossible, since the system has been using ARPA money to cover contracts. That waning federal aid, Cheng argued, should be replaced by more permanent state funding.

But in his statement last week, Beckham called CSCU’s request to replace temporary federal emergency funding with long-term state allocations “unrealistic” and “unsustainable.”

“CSCU’s request for additional funding appears to be based on a belief that one-time federal funding to compensate for COVID-related costs should continue in perpetuity,” he wrote.

[Democrat state representative Greg] Haddad said this reasoning obscures the reality of how the federal relief money was used. The state, he said, reduced the block grants that normally help fund its public colleges and universities by $170 million in last year’s budget, replacing them with one-time federal funds. Now that relief money is no longer on the table, leaving a gaping hole in the coffers for ongoing operating costs while colleges deal with the financial fallout of the pandemic.

“That was never a sustainable plan, and I think everybody knew it at the time,” Haddad said. “I’ve been surprised to hear that argument [about federal aid], honestly.”

Not until near the end of the article do we get to the heart of the matter. "Haddad said UConn has 'more options' than CSCU when it comes to making up for state funding cuts—namely its ability to attract full-tuition-paying out-of-state students." Why?

Unlike the flagship, CSCU, made up of largely nonselective institutions more focused on teaching than on research, has no revenue-generating sports teams or reserves of out-of-state applicants to use as leverage in its negotiations with lawmakers. Cheng said that dynamic has resulted in stagnant funding that hasn’t kept up with inflation in recent years.

It's unseemly, isn't it, to suggest that Connecticut might have excess capacity in access-assessment-remediation-retention.  To the state college system, though, that's a feature.

Cheng, along with faculty and students who spoke with Inside Higher Ed, argued the system is already underfunded, and that lack of resources is a major reason for enrollment declines. Further cuts, they said, won’t put Connecticut State institutions on a more sustainable track. Rather, they would lead to a domino effect of declining quality and retention difficulties that could result in dramatically lower graduation rates—and potentially even campus closures.

“This puts us on a downward spiral, a race to the bottom at the end of which these institutions are going to be hollowed out,” said John O’Connor, a sociology professor at Central Connecticut and vice president of the CSU-AAUP. “The fact of the matter is, the constituents this is going to hurt most are the students.”

Niya Blizzard-Ireland, a junior at Central, said she’s already seen the effects of last year’s cost-cutting measures, and she worries her campus is at risk of “changing completely.”

“I used to have much smaller classes, which are better for my learning style, never more than 20 students in a class. But last year I noticed it was at least 30 or more,” she said. “And a lot of the courses listed now don’t even have faculty attached when they’re announced, so you don’t know if it will even be held.”

Yes, shakeouts in excess capacity are like that.  As are foolish arguments, such as one offered by lobbyist Tom Harnisch, who labors under the same delusion Wisconsin politicians do.  "If they want more taxpayers, they should invest in the state’s biggest economic engine."

Connecticut has one of the highest out-migration rates of the several States.