By Charles Stile
It’s not entirely accurate to say that legislators are on the brink of enacting a sweeping overhaul of higher education without any idea how much the project will ultimately cost.
Some estimates did emerge but they might better be described as “back of envelope” guess-estimate variety.
Democratic Sen. Donald Norcross of Camden County, a co-sponsor of the bill, defended a controversial piece of the plan granting more autonomy to Rutgers University-Camden campus and create a powerful new joint board with Rowan University in Glassboro.
Norcross argued that Rutgers-Camden has been an under funded satellite in the Rutgers University system, and that greater autonomy was needed to modernize the campus and establish a job-generating public research university in South Jersey.
Norcross claimed that Rutgers-Camden gets back only 45 cents for every dollar it sends “up the Turnpike” to the main Rutgers campus in New Brunswick.
He did not provide the committee any analysis to back up that claim.
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