News

I write frequently in this newsletter about all the ways public higher education benefits individuals and society – through creating opportunity, advancing knowledge, and educating citizens who are informed, intellectually curious, and committed to civic engagement. Today, I want to talk about the dollars and cents.

The Joint Budget Committee met Monday and then again this morning. And ... there’s modest good news here. The actions that affect us include the restoration of a cut that we’d taken during the special session with a net positive impact to the CSU System of $2.2M. The JBC also recommended caps on resident tuition increases at 3.5% and non-resident at 5% for both undergraduate, graduate and professional rates. These are also close to what we’ve been modelling, but the campus enrollment folks will need to analyze market conditions before we recommend anything to the Board there.

Bottom-line up front for those of you who know how long these emails can be: the state has yet to set the higher education budget for FY27, and they don’t set our tuition limits until they’ve completed the budget.  There remains substantial uncertainty around the entire state budget, and higher ed, sadly, is often one of the most prominent balancing factors when our elected officials find themselves in a budget bind. So ... we find ourselves running up against routine budget planning deadlines within our campuses without the information we need to finalize our decisions.

In February, CSU University Distinguished Professor Ed Barbier became the first economist ever to receive the Planet Earth Award from the Alliance of World Scientists – a coalition of 27,000 scientists worldwide who champion science as a basis for addressing global environmental challenges.

The word ‘hope’ takes its roots from Old English and Proto-Germanic languages and starts with a meaning of “to bend or incline toward.” In these roots lies a distinction between passive optimism and taking action toward the future one envisions. And envisioning a better future amid turbulent times may, in and of itself, be an important action. Few people embody this more completely, to my mind, than Abraham Lincoln, our 16th president, whose birthday we celebrate this month.

150 years ago…1876. Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone. The Transcontinental Express zoomed from New York City to San Francisco along the First Transcontinental Railroad in just under 84 hours. Custer had his “last stand” at the Little Bighorn. The Chicago Cubs won their first-ever National League game in a shutout against Louisville. And Colorado became the 38th state – an event we will be celebrating all year long as we honor our state’s sesquicentennial in 2026.

Five years ago this month, the U.S. began vaccinating for COVID-19. Looking back half a decade later, it’s difficult to remember the enormous sense of relief that brought. We had never produced an RNA vaccine before, and back in early 2020, if you’d asked those of us who studied infectious diseases about the future, I think our answers would have been pretty bleak.

It’s a sad irony that those of us who grew up in farming communities – where life and work revolve around growing and harvesting food – have a deep personal understanding of food insecurity. You learn early on that seasons of abundance can be followed by months of stretching resources to the point of breaking.

All of you know how difficult it has been to keep pace with the numerous federal changes (and subsequent court actions and administration responses) that are impacting higher education. CSU System leadership remains actively engaged with our Congressional delegation, professional organizations, and governmental affairs teams in ongoing discussions around student aid, as well as research funding, and indirect cost recoveries associated with our research mission. We’re following closely the State of Tennessee’s challenge to the law that underpins Hispanic Serving Institutions such as CSU Pueblo.

With no shortage of economic challenges, state budgets are under increasing pressure, providing a gloomy forecast for funding of public higher education. At the same time, a narrative of the “failure” of the higher education system that has been around for some time seems to be surging. Ideologically based clashes roil campus communities, creating issues of public safety. External political pressures for greater control/accountability threaten the independence of America’s colleges and universities. Turns out the 1930s were a tough time for universities.