The Jersey City Independent "

When Gov. Jon Corzine’s final budget was passed in July, almost two months after the Spring 2006 semester’s end, Rutgers students and faculty may not have had school funding on their minds. Yet those hardest hit quickly became aware of what these slashes in New Jersey’s higher education budget would mean.

“I have already been severely affected,” explained Arwa Ibrahim, a Rutgers College junior. “My financial aid has dramatically decreased, leading me to rely more heavily on loans and forcing me to work more hours during the upcoming semesters. Several opportunities that I previously have had also vanished as a result of the cuts.”

Ibrahim has always struggled to attend Rutgers University, as her parents can’t assist with her tuition, room and board. She was aware of the potential consequences of Corzine’s decision, having already helped to organize protests against the cuts. But it was a letter sent to her home that brought those cuts to life.

“In my first and second years at Rutgers, I was able to rely on financial aid and a reasonable amount of loans,” she said. “However, I found out through a term bill mailed to my parents that my financial grants have decreased by approximately $5,000 from the previous year. This decrease, along with the increase in tuition, forced me to increase my loans by approximately $8,000.

“My total loans so far, not including this upcoming year, are $11,994,” continued Ibrahim. “My loans for this upcoming year alone total $16,612.”

Bearing the Burden

New Jersey’s higher education budget was cut by more than $169 million this year, a year that saw more than half of all other states in the country actually increase their aid to higher education.

These cuts led Rutgers University to raise tuition and cut approximately $50 million from programs, staff and services. Tuition for most in-state undergraduates will increase 8 percent, to almost $10,000 a year when obligatory fees are added in — a whopping $2,000 more than tuition was just three years ago. And this figure does not include the cost of housing.

The combination of less financial aid and additional expenses often force students to work extra hours during the week and on weekends, which inevitably detracts from the quality of their education. “I usually work 10 hours a week during the school year but now I’ll have to work 20,” Ibrahim said.

Rutgers University has one of the highest in-state tuitions in the nation. According to a study done by the Association of American Universities, Rutgers’ in-state tuition has ranked fourth highest for the past nine years. About 60 percent of its students rely upon federal aid to make up for what the University and state cannot cover.

Yet in 2006, federal aid for higher education experienced its deepest cut yet — approximately $12 billion. This cut could raise the average college student’s debt by almost $6,000, to $23,300.

Those students who most need the aid are also the ones most affected by the cuts, as evidenced by two programs cut from the state budget — NJ Transfer and the Outstanding Scholar Recruitment Program (OSRP).

NJ Transfer helps students who succeed at community and two-year colleges transfer to four-year institutions within the state. The Outstanding Scholar Recruitment Program awards merit-based scholarships to in-state students to attend New Jersey’s public universities.

This is a vital scholarship for in-state students, and an important way for New Jersey to keep them from taking their talents to out-of-state universities. Luckily, Rutgers has put aside enough of its own money this year to keep the OSRP alive in 2006-07. But looming budget cuts for 2007 may not allow for it to continue beyond this year.

“I’m most concerned that the University not lose ground in student recruitment,” said Professor Nicholas Rennie, chair of the undergraduate German program at Rutgers-New Brunswick. “It’s essential that Rutgers serve as an attractive, economically viable option to students from NJ and out-of-state. Steep rises in tuition, necessitated by the cuts, obviously put us and our students in a difficult position.”

While many worry that the cuts will drastically change the quality of education, and whether or not the University will be able to attract as many students to attend, losing an affordable state university in New Jersey is also an issue.

Ibrahim’s fears highlight the worst-case scenario that many will undoubtedly face this year.

“My greatest concern is the ability to continue to attend school,” she said. “If my financial aid decreases even more next year, I might decide to take a couple of years off to work and save money to pay for tuition.”

Faculty at Rutgers will also feel the affects of the new budget. Certain cuts will be obvious, like layoffs and course cancellations. Others are not as easily quantified.

“We lost a great new potential faculty member when there was a hiring freeze imposed,” explained Nancy Holmstrom, chair of the Philosophy Department at Rutgers-Newark. “We have had a few courses taught by part-time lecturers cancelled, more are threatened, and we had to agree to raise our class size. Presently we are a smaller department than we were two years ago. It’s bad — everyone is affected, but those with fewer resources to begin with are the worst hit.”

The full impact of the cuts won’t be felt until after classes begin on Sept. 5. “It will probably take the rest of us a while to gauge the effects of the cuts on our own day-to-day lives,” explained Rennie. “The final budget for the University was only recently set, and the budgets (and budget cuts) for individual units and services are, in many cases, still being worked out.”

Fighting for Their University

Doug Laustsen, a fourth year music education undergraduate at Rutgers’ Mason Gross School of the Arts, feels passionately that the state has a responsibility to fund public higher education.

“In the 1960s, the state of New Jersey decided to [commit to] a responsibility to provide its citizens with the opportunity to receive higher education, making it a goal to fund two-thirds of a student’s higher education costs,” said Laustsen.

But the state is falling short, he explained, saying that, “Today, the state is funding less than half of a student’s higher education, and it has reached a point where some New Jersey citizens do not have the financial means to attend college.”

Students like Ibrahim and Laustsen are not planning to just sit and watch this devastation occur.

“We need to take direct action to ensure that our public
education doesn’t become even more unaffordable,” Ibrahim said. “I think students fighting for affordable or free education should use radical approaches to make sure their demands are being met.”

There were a variety of protests against the budget cut before it became final, from student campaigns like Tent State University to university advocacy through the Friends of Rutgers coalition.

The Friends of Rutgers (FOR) Web site explains that their goal is to “increase awareness of and support for Rutgers within the state and federal government, and among the media and New Jersey voters.”

Robert Pye, Community Affairs Specialist for Rutgers, explained that their advocacy efforts try to teach legislators how Rutgers spends its money and why these funds are needed.

However, the group’s future activities are unclear, he said. Newly formed committees like the Committee on Efficiency and Entrepreneurship are rethinking the best ways to effectively use their resources for advocacy. The FOR director, Richard Considine, was recently let go — another casualty of the cut.

With the Rutgers administration’s lackluster advocacy plans, it seems students are left alone once again in the fight to restore their school’s funding.

Tent State University (TSU), which began in 2003, is already developing a plan for what to do this year.

Last April, TSU brought students, faculty, staff, and community members and organizations together to construct a tent city on Voorhees Lawn in New Brunswick. Organizers explain that the tent campuses represent how federal and state governments have abandoned public education in favor of war spending and corporatization. Started at Rutgers University in 2003, TSU has grown from a few tents in New Jersey to a national movement advocating full public support of higher education.

This year’s campaign will begin with a rally at Rutgers University on Sept. 23 to ask the university for support in the fight.

“The group is planning an ambitious grassroots campaign to rally the students to reinstate the budget cuts of 2006,” said Laustsen, a Tent State University organizer.

The fight for budget restoration at Rutgers is far from over, and according to the Rutgers community, it is a fight worth staying in — no matter how strained everyone is as a result of the most recent cuts. As Rutgers professor Rennie said, “It takes years — even generations — to build top-rank programs, but they can be dissolved in months.”

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