New op-ed: Public universities and colleges can serve as economic engines to drive economy out of pandemic slump

On February 25, 2021, CalMatters published an op-ed from Dick Ackerman and Mel Levine, co-chairs of the California Coalition for Public Higher Education, titled, “Public universities and colleges can serve as economic engines to drive economy out of pandemic slump.” Here’s an excerpt:

The University of California, California State University and California’s Community Colleges are economic engines for the state. They provide jobs, workforce training and innovations. But they need the fuel of stable state and federal funding sources to help drive the state’s recovery as it emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The op-ed continues:

The 2021-22 budget proposed by Gov. Gavin Newsom would increase their budgets by 3% and includes a promise that tuition and student fees won’t be increased. The governor, in an agreement with legislative leaders announced last week, signed legislation this week that restored previously enacted reductions, effective July 1, for UC and CSU. We appreciate these proposed increases and restorations of lost funding amid the pandemic’s downturn in revenues and increase in demands on the state budget.

But future budgets will need to make up for the funding losses public higher education suffered during the 2008-12 recession, the COVID-19 reductions in income from dining, housing and other on-campus services and the increased costs for new technology to shift to online instruction and other pandemic-related expenses.

Read the complete op-ed on the CalMatters’ website.