On Jan. 31, when Gov. Jan Brewer signed the package of bills that erased the state’s budget deficit, we were focused on the $141 million forced from the hands of Arizona’s universities.

Over the next few weeks, we saw the effects of those cuts and as a university newspaper should, we didn’t stop talking about what would happen to our school. We saw employees going on furlough, academic programs dissolving and campuses on the brink of extinction, and with the rest of our peers, we lamented the end of higher education as it was in the state.

What we didn’t do at the time was go absolutely off-the-wall mad in response to the cuts facing Arizona’s K-12 schools. Sure, it was disconcerting, but it made few waves in comparison to the potential that tuition could go up, scholarships could disappear and fewer classes could be offered. A university is a very insulated place from time to time.

But as with all institutes of higher education, there comes a time to look forward — even further than just another semester ahead.

Unfortunately, it seems increasingly bleak.

This week sees the premature end of the application process for wannabe Sun Devils across the world. With the capping of enrollment in response to budget cuts, the final day to turn in applications to join the class of 2013 is March 1, about five months earlier than usual.

But as concerning as this upcoming semester’s enrollment cap is, the real concern is the quality of the students who will apply further into the future.

Preceeding the bloody day Arizona’s education system had on Jan. 31, the system was largely in poor shape — really, really poor shape.

Arizona traditionally ranks somewhere near 49th in the nation per pupil spending. It is a retiree state that historically has liked its spending low and its taxes even lower. It is a state that has grown exponentially over the previous decade, spreading itself thin into more than 150 school districts. It is a state that teaches toward a graduation exit exam that has been simplified down, yet still cannot seem to be passed by thousands of students every year.

And on top of the standard hurdles, the K-12 schools have now been forced to swallow a similar pill to the one that the universities have been choking down. The legislature’s final budget for the current fiscal year trimmed a collective $113 million, with charter schools facing an additional $4 million and the state Department of Education taking another $8 million in cuts.

All of this leads us to wonder if it is the K-12 cuts, rather than the cuts directly dealt to the state’s universities, that will eventually sink higher education in Arizona.

After all, if the amount of students capable of university-level work plummets and the quality of our state’s grade schools drop even further below par, what difference will it make which programs are offered at state universities?

Sadly, the difference it makes is reminiscent of the difference that can be made by a handcuffed education system: very little.