Regional
(2009-12-15)
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DENVER, CO
(KUNC) -
Despite having one of the most educated populations in the country, Colorado ranks near the bottom for higher education funding. State schools are currently using federal stimulus money to stave off big budget cuts and widespread layoffs. But that one time influx will expire in 2011. So university officials may turn to voters.
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That may help students like Ely Walker, a third year student at the University of Colorado Medical School. He says he tries not to think about all the debt he's accruing.
"It's sort of like fake money, you know what I mean?" Walker asks, "It's sort of like tallying up this huge sum of money that I don't even know how to wrap my mind around."
Walker's from rural southeastern Colorado. And he's hoping to go back when he finishes med school next year, to help fill the mounting demand for rural doctors. But the state isn't exactly making this easy.
"It might be cheaper for me to have gone out of state, even to a private institution," Walker says.
That's because students at CU's med school leave with more debt than any other top 20 public research school. There's so little state financial aid available that students like Walker are forced to cover most of their fifty thousand dollar annual tuition and fees with loans.
"I know that I'll be graduating with a considerable amount of debt," Walker says.
But that's not the only problem lately for the med school. There are concerns that the school's accreditation could be in jeopardy, because state support has dropped so precipitously.
"You know some people say we really aren't a state university, we have some state assistance," quips University of Colorado President Bruce Benson.
Currently only five percent of CU's total budget comes from the state. Still, administrators have been able to keep in-state tuition for undergraduates relatively low, at $8,000 a year, which is comparable to other large state research schools.
"So we're working hard to make sure and keep the place affordable so that Colorado residents can come to our institution," Benson says.
Over the years, they've skated around declining state funding by attracting out-of-state students, mainly to the Boulder campus. Nearly half of all students there are from outside Colorado. But that's pushing the cap. And Benson's worried that number will drop anyway in the current economy. CU officials are planning to ask the legislature for more flexibility with tuition, something Governor Bill Ritter bristled at this week.
At Colorado State University, administrators say all options are on the table.
"These are uncharted waters for all of us and we have never been in a situation like this and there's not a lot to guide us," says CSU President Tony Frank.
CSU has even floated moving to a hybrid public-private model, where some students pay thousands of dollars more for certain degrees. But Frank says that's a last resort.
"That would be extraordinarily bad public policy," Frank says, "And I think going private, the state de-funding public higher education really would put a lot of our economic future at risk."
Both presidents scorn privatization but know it might happen anyway. They say the only real solution is to go to voters, who could approve a tax hike. That could happen as a stand alone measure, or as part of an overhaul of the controversial TABOR law.
Back at the CU med school in Aurora, student Ely Walker thinks taxpayers would be wise to support such a proposal.
"If you're basically scaring off students with huge sums of debt, they're going to go somewhere where it's cheaper and they may very well stay there," Walker says.
Walker says that brain drain will only worsen, if state support continues to drop. Or as the universities fear, fades away entirely by 2011.
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