Budget Ax Looms for a University Facing Historic Cuts

The clock began ticking on Monday for educators and students hoping to avert a potentially devastating financial blow to the University of Alaska system.

Higher tuition, fewer students, crushing layoffs and program closures all loomed as frightening possibilities on Day 1 of the state’s special legislative session. The fiscal year had already begun, on July 1, and in a few months, a new crop of students would be arriving at the state’s far-flung campuses.

It’s unclear whether all of those campuses will remain open, or how many faculty and staff members will have been laid off by then, assuming the cuts imposed by Gov. Michael J. Dunleavy, a master’s alumnus of the flagship campus in Fairbanks, are sustained. Students planning to major in departments with relatively low enrollments are wondering whether they’ll have to change course. Others, who are already enrolled in such majors, may have to switch campuses or finish online if those departments are shuttered.

The university’s supporters have until Wednesday morning to persuade the Republican-dominated Legislature to override the Republican governor’s budget veto. At stake is $135 million, including $130 million that Dunleavy has slashed from the university system, which represents 41 percent of its state support.

Veto overrides must take place within five days, so the university’s supporters had assumed they’d have until Friday to make their case. But on Monday, lawmakers ramped up the pressure by scheduling the vote for Wednesday at 11:30 a.m.

Dunleavy’s vetoes would cut $444 million from the state’s operating budget, slashing Medicaid programs, legal services, early education, and most deeply, the university system’s budget. It was unclear on Monday whether lawmakers would vote individually or collectively on the vetoed items.

If the university budget veto isn’t overturned, the Board of Regents is expected, on July 15, to declare financial exigency, giving the green light to accelerate program cuts and lay off faculty members, including those with tenure.

Native students living on tribal lands and commuting to nearby campuses are among the most unsettled as the budget battle plays out, since the fate of those regional, satellite campuses is unclear. Meanwhile, many of those students can’t afford to pack up and leave the state.

If the cuts are sustained, they will have ripple effects across the state, said James R. Johnsen, president of the University of Alaska system. When faculty members are laid off, the research grants and contracts they’ve been bringing in disappear. The university, which has already approved a 5 percent tuition increase for the coming year, will probably have to ask for a little more, Johnsen said.

“I don’t want to balance this burden on our students’ backs,” said Johnsen. The state already had the nation’s lowest college-going rate in 2017, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Expecting students to pay higher tuition for fewer courses, services, and professors isn’t realistic, critics of the cuts contend. Enrollment, which has already been declining, could take a huge hit, they warn.

David Deming, a professor of public policy, education, and economics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School and its Graduate School of Education, predicted, in a thread posted on Twitter, that degree-completion rates could drop between 15 and 20 percent a year for four-year degrees That, he wrote, would be “a massive blow to the state.”

With fewer students, tuition revenue will shrink. Researchers will leave, some of them courted by universities eager to tap in to the university’s expertise in climate science, Johnsen said. The university is a major hub for research in particular into the changing climate in the Arctic. “While our state remains in recession, other universities see the importance of climate change and will certainly be poaching our world-class researchers.”

The dilemma facing Alaska as it looks to cut programs and slash costs is a fast-track, high-octane version of the consolidations many universities have had to make in recent years.

“These kinds of decisions about program and campus closures are extremely controversial in the best of times, when there’s a lot of time to analyze programs and plan teachouts and transitions,” Johnsen said. If the veto isn’t overturned, the slashing will have to begin almost immediately, with relatively little time for careful consultation.

The cuts could represent one of the largest one-year disinvestments from public higher education by any state in modern history, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association.

The association’s president, Robert. E. Anderson, called the cuts “irresponsible.”

“I think it will be chaotic,” he said of the impact on Alaska’s campuses. “They’re left scrambling at the last minute just as they’re about to welcome a new crop of students.”

The governor’s press secretary, Matthew Shuckerow, did not respond to requests for comment. He has pointed out publicly that the governor was elected, in part, on his promise to voters to balance the budget without raising taxes or cutting into the money each resident receives from the state’s Permanent Fund, which is drawn from the state’s oil and gas revenues. Despite declining oil revenues over the past several years, Dunleavy promised to increase the payout to each resident, from $1,600 last year to $3,000 this year.

Putting a little more money in the pockets of Alaskans while slashing their university system won’t pay off, Anderson said. “I don’t see how this strategy will jump-start an economy that badly needs it.”

By contrast with the cuts in Alaska, state support for public colleges increased in 43 states for the 2019 fiscal year as many of those states enjoyed economic rebounds. That compared with 32 states’ seeing increases in higher-education spending the previous year, Moody’s Investors Service reported in February.

Meanwhile, Alaska’s population is declining, and its 6.4 percent unemployment rate is the highest in the nation.

The University of Alaska system has three separately accredited universities – in Fairbanks, Anchorage, and Juneau – with 16 campuses scattered across the vast state. Some of the campuses are accessible only by air or water. About 17 percent of the system’s more than 26,000 full- and part-time students in the fall of 2018 were Alaskan Natives — the term for indigenous people born in the state. Many of them live on tribal lands and attend the campuses closest to home. The median age for students is 25.

The Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities released a statement last week urging Alaska legislators to overturn the veto.

If enacted, the statement said, the cuts “would raise college costs on Alaskan students and their families, eliminate educational programs and the opportunities they provide, and ultimately place Alaska at an extreme competitive disadvantage in developing a strong, sustainable economy.”

The cuts would lead Alaska’s top students to pursue higher education elsewhere “or worse, not to seek higher education at all,” it said.

Cathy Sandeen, chancellor of the University of Alaska at Anchorage, said she is working on two parallel tracks this week. She is urging that the veto be overturned,but given the makeup of the Legislature, she says she has to realistically deal with the probability of cuts.

Sandeen is gathering data and talking with her cabinet and her deans about how they’re going to make decisions on program eliminations. And she’s talking with the University of Alaska’s accrediting body about the potential ramifications of the cuts.

Also on the chopping block could be programs in Native culture and languages, which are particularly popular at some of the regional campuses. Sara Eliza Johnson, an assistant professor of English at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said some indigenous students may have to leave their tribal lands if they hope to attend college.

For some students, she said, the question will be: “Am I going to stay in state and maintain my cultural activity or am I going to have to leave to get a quality education?”

Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.