Higher Ed Day!As a life-long educator, I realize there is not a more effective teaching tool than hands-on learning. This holds true with most any individual and any experience. It was quite true for me during a recent trip to Montgomery for Higher Ed Day.One hour in front of the State House taught me more about Alabama politics than any hour in an Alabama classroom could do. This was politics in practice – and all the better for being experienced rather than taught. Along with about 50 students, one professor and several staff members, I traveled to our capital city to lobby the Governor, the House and the Senate to support funding for higher education. As many of you may know, the Governor’s budget for next year proposes a 14 percent cut for higher education while proposing a much smaller cut for K-12, even though the higher education share of the Alabama Education Trust Fund is much less than 50 percent. One way to mitigate the effects of such an enormous cut in our state allocation is to raise tuition. But to offset the proposed cut at UAH and throughout the UA System we would have to raise tuition by more than 25 percent, which is unacceptable. It is interesting that every time universities have raised tuition in the past, the same politicians who are now forcing us to raise it would complain mightily about our doing so! It was quite amazing to me that the presence of only a few percent of Alabama’s more than 120,000 undergraduates in our public 4-year universities could draw the personal attendance of the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, the President pro tem of the Senate, and a bevy of other senior and influential members of the House and Senate. Just think what could occur if a few percent more students were to turn up in Montgomery. And just think what might happen if a few percent more were actually to vote. The message given to more than 2,000 students outside the State House by an energized Gordon Stone, Executive Director of the Higher Education Partnership, was that higher education and K-12 are complementary, not competing, educational organizations. Universities need K-12 schools to graduate well-educated students who can enter our freshman classes without the need for remedial education. In turn, K-12 schools need 4-year colleges and universities to provide the teachers, administrators and staff to run our elementary, middle and high schools. We need to regard education in Alabama as K-PhD. It was refreshing to see students arguing against zero salary increases for university faculty and staff. It was good to hear students cheering for more investment in the future of Alabama’s knowledge-based economy. When one senator proposed that taxes might have to be raised if cuts were not to be made, it was interesting to hear silence (when he clearly expected a chorus of boos). There are alternatives to cutting budgets when the periodic (and entirely predictable) oscillations in sales tax mean that the state’s income doesn’t come up to expectations. One alternative is to argue that occasionally taxes must be raised to pay for what we need to pay for. We need to plan for even greater attendance next year, we need to get UAH banners and flags there and we need a UAH chant or a fight song so we can join all the other 4-year institutions that brought their traditions to the State House. But we are the only ones in blue and white! One thing is clear. Turning up and making your presence heard in Montgomery is good. One thing was even clearer. About a dozen politicians said in a dozen different ways: “We are concerned for you but we have no solution other than to cut your budget.” They clearly did not hear the message. Let me also congratulate Sam Parks, Anthony Bowling, Charter Nicholson, Andrew Hazen, Megan Bush, Nevin Fowler, Amber Rauschkolb, Tekia Slaughter, Tiffany York and Candice Rigsby, the SGA and the BSA and other student organizations for getting (proportionately) by far the biggest turnout of all universities from within the UA system. So, one way to remind the politicians that they need to find another way is to keep telling them that a) you don’t accept that answer and that b) you vote. You should contact them directly by email or phone or letter. Contact information is on UAH’s Government Relations web page: uah.edu/govrel Get online and tell them what you think! Give Dave your comments here! |
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