Cutting funding boosts tuition, reduces course offerings, and — according to one expert — can deter businesses from moving to New Jersey
By Colleen O’Dea
New Jersey has cut funding for public colleges by more than a quarter since the start of the recession, resulting in higher tuition at the exact time layoffs and salary cuts were making it more difficult for many families to pay more, according to a new national report.
[…]Last November’s successful bond referendum for construction of new academic facilities will increase student capacity, but that will not help individual students afford continued high tuition costs, said Susanna Tardi, a William Paterson University sociology professor and executive vice president of the American Federation of Teachers New Jersey (AFTNJ), representing 20,000 faculty and staff at state four-year colleges, universities and county colleges.
“We need New Jersey legislators to provide much-needed general funding for higher education instead of putting the burden on New Jersey students and their families to shoulder costs and accumulate debt,” she said. “The CBPP report should serve as a wake-up call to fund higher education for the sake of our students and the state as a whole.”
[…]Tardi said students could be facing an even greater challenge in trying to pay for college given the effects of the federal budget cuts that Congress allowed to occur. As it stands now, the federal sequester would make cuts to student financial aid, work-study jobs, and college access programs, she said.
“This year’s state budget will exclude many from academic opportunities especially if compounded with the impact of a federal sequester,” she said. “The high tuition/high-assistance model that depends on limited grants and costly loans is not working.”
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