Good news everybody - our budget's on the chopping block. again.
Corzine announced his super-special-awesome new budget on Feb. 26 at the State House in Trenton. In his address to the state Legislator, he made a cursory mention to the tremendous hit higher education may take.
That's right - we're taking one for the team again.
Corzine's budget would cut $3.7 million in state funding to the College next year.
That, piled on top of the cuts we've taken over the past few years, and combined with inflation, would be a tremendous burden for this school to bear.
Corzine is once again looking to his favorite punching bag to fix the budget problems infamous New Jersey politicians like him have created over the years. That we are once again the target of his cuts only makes the already strained relationship between higher education and the state even less comfortable.
The governor has been placed in a difficult position. He has been charged with righting the finances of one of the most corrupt, debt-ridden states in the country. Cuts need
to be made somewhere.
But as College President R. Barbara Gitenstein said, Corzine is ignoring the long-term economic consequences of cuts to higher education.
His current proposed budget, as it stands, is counterproductive. He provides for what he calls the biggest increase in school aid ever. But because of proposed cuts to higher
education, all the money spent on school aid goes out of state, along with all the kids who don't go to the underfunded colleges here.
By funding New Jersey's public schools and not funding its colleges and universities, Corzine is throwing money and jobs away.
Corzine needs to make many, many cuts in order to get the state anywhere near out of the hole. But cuts to higher education don't make sense as a means to that end.
