With Amendment A officially disqualified from the November 2024 ballot, you might think we’d be done talking about education spending for now, but Speaker Schultz and the Higher Education Committee have a different idea. As reported by the Salt Lake Tribune, Speaker Schultz has directed the presidents of Utah’s 16 higher education institutions to identify potential cuts they could make to reduce their budget by 10%.
This directive is simple, clear, and important. Utah has recently announced a guarantee that all of its high school graduates will have a place at at least one of the state’s higher education institutions, but this guarantee does not make any assurances that students will be able to afford to attend. Rising tuition costs are a major obstacle to true access to higher education, and a major driver of those tuition costs is university budgets. While it is true that a 10% reduction in university operating costs will not equate to a 10% reduction in tuition costs, the practice of curtailing costs may also curtail tuition costs going forward.
State higher education institutions are partially funded by taxpayer monies because the public at large can and should benefit from them. There is a justified expectation that, by virtue of funding colleges and technical colleges, the state can rely on an educated and qualified workforce to keep its local economy growing. Equally, the state benefits from those who study to become healthcare providers, teachers, lawyers, electricians, plumbers and so on. However, taxpayers are also justified in seeking value for money when it comes to higher education, hence the Legislature’s directive to identify high impact degrees and qualifications that could be expanded at the expense of courses and programs with less value for the average taxpayer.
This simple instruction is truly music to our ears. Often, the budgetary process is made complicated with earmarks and restricted funds and grants. This directive allows for all of these stipulations to be honored but not used as an excuse for avoiding the primary goal: reducing the budget.
Notably, the requirement for state institutions to reduce their budgets does not extend to capital projects. The Higher Education Capital Budget, used to fund the construction of new buildings at state higher education institutions, has appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars over the last several years. Perhaps this is a space for future budgetary review.
Reducing higher education budgets is not punitive, but rather improves access to higher education for Utah students and improves value for money for Utah taxpayers. We applaud Speaker Schultz and the Legislature for this directive and look forward to reviewing the cut proposals as they are released.