Shifting Political Dynamics
An Uncertain Political and Economic Climate Poses New Challenges to the Future of Higher Education
By Page Boinest Melton

Experts reading the tea leaves from November's elections see some challenging days ahead for public support of higher education. The good news is that voters see education as a top priority and endorsed education-specific ballot initiatives to pump more construction and scholarship money into colleges and universities. Yet the majority of voters also expressed a smaller-government, anti-tax sentiment at the polls Nov. 5 — a sentiment that recasts state legislatures and the Congress in a more conservative mold.

Add the backdrop of a still-struggling economy to the new political mix and the lust for major new expenditures subsides. "There has been a shift," says Jim Watts, vice president of state affairs for the Southern Regional Education Board. "While there is a more bipartisan agreement about the priority of education, there may be a difference of opinions about how to go about emphasizing that priority."

Few understand those priorities better than voters in Tennessee, who for years have resisted enacting a state income tax to generate cash for services including higher education. Reliance on the state's sales tax, coupled with Tennessee's stumbling economy, have triggered massive budget deficits, deep spending cuts, double-digit tuition increases, even a brief government shutdown. Without a longer term funding source, says Dr. Rodney Stanley at Tennessee State University's Institute for Government, "the only way to raise the necessary income for higher education is to keep raising the price of public education. Tennessee is going to find it's cheaper for a lot of students to go to school out of state."

State Sen. Steve Cohen, D-Memphis, put the education argument to work this election season, leading a winning campaign to lift Tennessee's ban on a lottery. Now Cohen is drafting legislation to create a lottery to pump more money into college scholarships, with an undetermined mix of merit- and need-based financial aid. Voter support for the lottery is a start, Cohen says, but the numbers game can only "supplement, not supplant" spending for higher education. "Education is the most important component and it's not being funded adequately," he says. "People are just not fond of taxes at any level."