“We’re well aware of it, so that we know financial aid is prepared to see more people, counseling is prepared to see more people,” but, she says, “in many ways,” being ready for the influx of students a recession brings is “a state of mind.”
Ultimately, Bleeker says the recession “hasn’t been the average recession by anybody’s measure,” as it has hit “from all the directions it possibly could.” She explains that, in Colorado, the community college system took a 17.6-percent reduction to the state allocation.
Bleeker adds that legislators are “hard pressed to try to come up with where you get money to fund higher education if it isn’t generated by the state’s economy. What do you sacrifice in order to give higher ed what it needs? Do you sacrifice prison systems, do you sacrifice health care, do you sacrifice K-12? So they’re as hard pressed as we are to make this right.”
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