Editorial: Higher education at risk

Sunday, April 8, 2007 | 7:28 a.m.

For a man who co-authored the successful Education First constitutional amendment that requires lawmakers to pass the budget for public schools first, Gov. Jim Gibbons sure has his priorities fouled up when it comes to funding higher education.

It is already embarrassing enough that Nevada's universities rank low, according to the annual college surveys published by U.S. News & World Report. Yet the governor's budget proposal for the next biennium would ensure that we need not expect higher rankings in the foreseeable future.

Faced with a projection that Nevada's revenue will fall nearly $137 million short of original budget estimates over the next two years, coupled with a vow not to raise taxes, Gibbons proposes giving tax breaks to banks and other businesses. That is plain screwy, especially when he is asking state agencies, including the Nevada System of Higher Education, to lower their financial expectations.

That's why we support Chancellor Jim Rogers, who fired off a letter to Gibbons that was deservedly blunt.

"I cannot in good faith recommend budget cuts from present budgeted levels at these institutions," Rogers wrote. "To do so would, I believe, threaten the very fabric of higher education in this state."

As Las Vegas Sun reporter Christina Littlefield wrote in Friday's edition, Gibbons has said he will protect funding levels for kindergarten through 12th grade but place on the butcher block higher education along with other critical state functions.

Rogers fears that Nevada's two universities could lose a combined 225 faculty and administrative positions, and more than 700 classes, reductions that would delay and discourage students from graduating.

Rogers appropriately described the potential cuts, coupled with potential reductions at the community college level involving workforce training, cultural diversity programs and partnerships with the Clark County School District, as so Draconian as to "undermine the very quality of life we strive to create and maintain" in Nevada.

"For my part, I will not be the chancellor who offers up this destruction," Rogers wrote.

If Gibbons wants to be known as an "Education First" governor, he would be well advised to help build up our institutions of higher education rather than use the wrecking-ball approach to tear them down.