Local College of Iowa (LCI), my alma mater, faces a budget crisis. As a state-supported institution, it recently received notice of a ten percent cut in funding for the current fiscal year that began July 1, 2009. With four months already elapsed, the school actually must absorb the full year’s reduction in state appropriations over the remaining eight months.
The plan on the table calls for: tuition surcharges; furloughs (involuntary, unpaid leave) for all employees; layoffs; all the way up to permanent termination of programs. Pain-sharing is the name of the game, although suddenly the notion of “sharing” has gotten a lot less popular around campus.
The prosect of a further reduction of similar or greater magnitude faces the institution again next year, because this year’s state budget makes use of one-time “stimulus money” from the federal government. President Obama has already ruled out a second round of stimulus, leaving Iowa with that much less to spend next year.
It will surely, noticeably change LCI. I just hope that the experience of diminishing state support will awaken a resolve toward greater self-support and self-sufficiency among my former colleagues. (I not only graduated from LCI but later taught Finance courses there.)
They are in the fight of their institutional lives over there. If they dissipate their energy fighting amongst themselves for scraps of dwindling public largesse, it will risk institutional failure. However, if they unite their energy in a campaign to reshape the school to accommodate a permanently reduced level of state support, they will come through OK. This is the lesson that Local College of Iowa needs now to learn.
It would be nice to think that people can try for the greater good rather than only thinking of themselves, but that might be too much to hope for.
Whether personally or institutionally, societies are better served if this
lesson is learned. Might require a Representative Republic in it’s infancy.
Our Dog is having trouble learning new tricks.