Apparently it’s time for me to go back to college. After all, if the opponents of the 6-mill levy—the property tax that provides about $13 million a year to the University System at large—are to be believed, it’s all champagne wishes and caviar dreams on Montana’s university campuses. And I love me some champagne.
But things must have changed a lot in the decade or so since I left the University of Montana, because I never experienced “grandiose country club gyms” in “billion-dollar empires” or any of the other excesses that those who would have Montanans cut off a key source of funding to its higher education sector have described.
In fact, things must have changed a lot in just a few months, since the last time I visited my alma mater. The professors I visited with in Missoula were still working hard for a lot less pay than they would receive elsewhere; the administrators were still making do with less, and the students continued to work way more hours than they should have to while trying to get their education. Guess they missed the memo about the lifestyle they’re supposed to be living.
Putting aside the sarcasm for a moment, I have to say in all seriousness that I don’t buy the idea that Montana’s universities are living high on the hog on the taxpayers’ dime. The “fat” that could be trimmed has been. And the share of the higher ed budget provided by the Montana taxpayer has shrunk dramatically. In just the time since I graduated, the state’s share of the bill has fallen from 73 percent to 39 percent, according to the nonprofit coalition Stand Up For Education and a recent Chronicle article. Moreover, the Montana Legislative Fiscal Division found that among its peer states, Montana makes the lowest investment in the per-student cost for higher education—in fact, nearly 40 percent less than the average.
The idea that facilities—“fancy” buildings—should stand as proxy for excessive funding is, quite simply, ludicrous. Many new construction projects are funded by donor bequest or by grants, or—in the case of the so-called “country club gyms”—by the students themselves through voted-in fees.
I will grant the levy opponents one thing: They are absolutely correct when they say that Montana’s universities are not “bare-bones, modest colleges,” as they might have at one time been envisioned. Nor should they be. Students seeking higher education in the Montana university system expect and deserve better than that. When they graduate, they will have to compete not only nationally but internationally, and I can guarantee that universities in Asia and Europe are not scaling back to return to some romantic notion of history when higher education required nothing more than a lecturer and some slate tablets for note-taking.
Higher education in Montana requires taxpayer support to survive, but Montana’s future depends on maintaining quality colleges and universities. Luckily, the investments we make in the system pay dividends quickly. Stand Up For Education noted that the university system attracts more than $100 million annually in “externally funded grants and research that help businesses and agriculture,” adding that “technologies developed at Montana universities have helped create over 30 Montana businesses in recent years.” One need only look at Bozeman’s high-tech and biotech sectors to see examples of such cross-pollination.
In fact, when I look around, it’s a lot easier to find examples of ways that Montana’s universities benefit the state as a whole than it is to find the abuses and waste (or the oppressed conservative professors and students) that opponents claim are rife in the university system. Perhaps those who would have us vote against the levy could stand to take spend some time in the Economics department—and step away from the Mythology classes.