The Effectiveness of the Protests
Before students marched en masse, House Republicans had a deal on the table to cut $121 million from the university system’s budget. The ABOR turned its nose up snootily. The day after the protests, that number has increased to $142 million. There is a silver lining, I suppose:
GOP lawmakers propose a $142 million reduction – the universities have said they can only afford $100 million – but it is accompanied by permission to borrow $70 million for building maintenance that had been blocked by Senate Appropriations Chairman Russell Pearce, R-Mesa.
For now, this is fine; but piling more debt on top of the shortfalls that we already have is an awful long-term strategy.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some forms to fill out.
The Arizona Desert Lamp 
“For now, this is fine; but piling more debt on top of the shortfalls that we already have is an awful long-term strategy.”
You have perfectly summed up the entire “stimulus” package with that one singular sentence.
Let the market sort it out! Let freedom ring!
I am completely ignoring the sarcasm, and referring to you as Matt “Markets and Freedom” Styer from here on in. 😉
Oddly, though, this is one of my less-market-supporting posts. The point here was rather that, for all of the student-based hooplah, the lobbyists and other university activists who actually have the ear of the legislature failed to support a package with less cuts, and as a result have been hit with more cuts. In all issues involving legislation, horse-trading matters. This is exactly why such dependence on this entity for funding is so ill-advised.
I do understand your concern for politicking in relation to educational funding.
I don’t understand why you don’t think politicking wouldn’t essentially continue on unscathed with large private endowments, or why those endowments aren’t just as subject to economic downturns as government finances. I mean, it’s all the same money, isn’t it? If tax revenues are down, private revenues are down.
And isn’t it concerning to you that they (if they act as economic agents!) will tend to fund those things which they get the greatest return from, e.g., not the humanities? The humanities have good practical value – but not practical in a way that is marketable. Marketable humanities would portray humans in a way that maximized their profitability, e.g, sociology of consumption (consumer psychology?), philosophy that validates the status quo, and so on. I can’t see how marketizing this stuff wouldn’t lead to an increasingly narrow and rationalized picture of what we humans are about. And that is catastrophc.
I’m not opposed to private endowments with the proper surrounding institutions – either “We’re really prestigious, so you need to come to us begging” (though this is a small subset of all universities and probably not a sustainable setup over the long haul anyway) or a regulatory scheme a la the Germanic and Nordic countries whereby industry, government and labor are set for cooperative relationships with one another.
[…] by Connor Mendenhall on February 4th, 2009 Round one of the Great Budget Bout went to the Arizona legislature, but one UA student has a plan to keep fighting–by recalling recently installed Arizona Governor […]