The anarchy that’s already here

But there’s one part of Floridian identity that no one is proud of these days: our sinking public university system. Earlier this year, the University of Florida (UF) eliminated 430 faculty and staff positions, and the University of Central Florida (UCF) was told by state government officials to expect a $57 million dollar cut to its operating budget, a near-existential threat. Princeton’s budget shortfalls look like a cakewalk by comparison. Even more worrying is the news coming out of California, where last month the state’s collision course with bankruptcy forced the UC Board of Regents to raise “student fees” — California speak for “tuition” — by $3,000, a hike that may, for some students, be prohibitively high.

In a lot of ways, though, the crisis over the cost of public higher education shouldn’t be surprising. Contrary to popular orthodoxy, it has much less to do with the recession and much more to do with the popular conception of public universities in the U.S. — a conception that may not be sustainable. The scariest part of the imminent self-destruction of state university systems around the country — and the UC system in particular — is that they’re likely a warning sign of much more serious things to come. The state university system as we know it may be headed off a cliff. There are a few reasons why.

The first lies in a striking dichotomy: A college degree is essential to getting a decent job and so rationally worth the high cost of tuition; a college degree is an awesome investment in the future. But the price that Americans are willing to pay for a college education remains far below what it actually costs to put students through college. Given the planned 32 percent increase in student fees, UC schools now cost twice what they did a decade ago. But still, relative to tuition at private universities, $10,000 a year is a bargain: articles in The Daily Princetonian at the end of November reported that Princeton tuition is closing in on $50,000.

Despite that seemingly high price tag, it isn’t as if private universities are charging the full cost of private education either. Much of Annual Giving’s importance lies in the fact that it’s used to subsidize student tuition: The University simply couldn’t run a balanced budget without it. That state universities have been charging students so little for so long means that the adjustment happening now will be especially painful.

To make matters worse, public universities have become orders of magnitude more ambitious, just as economic crisis and artificially low tuitions have set in. As the New York Times reported last month, the best evidence of this is Arizona State University (ASU), whose president, Michael Crow, announced upon his installation seven years ago that he would remake ASU into the “New American University”, breaking down barriers between departments, spiking enrollment and financing new research projects. Now, seven years later, ASU is out of money and laying off staff left and right. Flagship public universities have made serious commitments to expanding at precisely the wrong time.

Finally, the problem is exacerbated by the fact that the term “state university” is in many cases a misnomer. Conservative columnist George Will GS ’68 told me at a James Madison Program-sponsored forum Wednesday that some state universities in California receive only 20 percent of their funding from the state government. The rest comes from endowment income, private donations and federal funds. A year from now, if the United States is still fighting in Afghanistan, trying to reform healthcare and the banking sector and nation-building in Iraq, states will be on the hook for more and more of the cost of educating students at public universities as stimulus funds dry up.

In all, state university systems across the country are in serious trouble. The million-dollar question, then, is how to fix them. A number of solutions have been floated: make wealthier students pay more in tuition to subsidize the educations of poorer students, create more jobs that don’t require college degrees, send fewer students to college. None appears to be a catchall: The jury is still very much out.

My solution, though, is much more all-encompassing. When in doubt, I think back to Coach Eric Taylor’s advice in Friday Night Lights: “Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose.” If only it always worked for the Dillon Panthers.