It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Well, who are we kidding? This semester has been pretty bad. Instead of worrying about classes, we’ve been wondering if those classes will still be around next semester for us to stress over. The last couple weeks have been marked with partisan fighting, protests at the capitol and terse e-mails from ASU President Michael Crow (though, to be fair, that man can wield a metaphor.) For the first time in recent memory, we’ve become acutely interested in usually arcane topics, like appropriations committees and what goes into writing a bill.
And it’s all led up to this: $143 million taken away from the state universities this year. According to our calculations, that could buy about 21,000 lower-level premium tickets to the Super Bowl, nearly 11,000 years of residency in a one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment at the resort-style Vista del Sol, about 6,000 pimped-out 2009 Toyota Priuses, 50 $2.85 million Dirk Koetter buyouts or 2.86 million venti mocha Frappuccinos.
Or you could feed everyone in the United States with Jack in the Box tacos and still have enough for 123 million people to have seconds.
Or, if you had $143 million sitting around, you could pump it into Arizona’s hurting university system.
Sure, we understand that the cuts had to come from somewhere. We know ASU isn’t the only institution that’s hurting. And we’re glad we weren’t the ones who had to get out the red marker to edit the state budget to make up for a $1.6 billion deficit.
But college is our frame of reference, and that’s the part of the budget that’s going to affect us most. Right now, it might be hard to put those millions of dollars into concrete terms, but it’s certain we’ll begin seeing the effects of a stretched budget and tough economy sooner rather than later.
The fallout of the budget bomb is already starting to settle — we know staff and faculty furloughs, academic consolidation and cost-cutting at every corner are part of our educational reality, though Crow tells us these only begin to cover the shortfall in University funding. More drastic measures lie ahead to keep the New American University affordable for the recession-plagued New American.
When this year’s freshmen graduate, ASU will be a very different place. This year’s cuts, though dramatic, are still less than next year’s funding slashes. The years after that could get better, but if the economy stays stagnant, it could also get a lot worse. Class sizes will likely increase, enrollment could be capped and more layoffs seem inevitable. As we brace for impact, images of ghostlike closed campuses coupled with double-digit tuition flash before our eyes. Is it time for us to prepare for our worst-case scenario?
The problem isn’t that the times are a-changin’. The question over the next few years is if we’ll be able to keep up.
