Opinion: Building a university in wild times

We live in interesting times. That is supposedly the making of an ancient Chinese curse, which is actually doubtful, but anybody bored with the current era must go by a wild-side standard.

With Donald Trump in the U.S. president’s chair for at least two more years and Mike Dunleavy serving as Alaska’s governor for the next four years or so, getting bored in the foreseeable future is an unlikely prospect — for this columnist at the very least.

Dunleavy is determined to bring state spending down to match Alaska’s likely state income and that will require doing a great many things differently. The state has developed some expensive habits over the years and spending has been at a level where it absolutely must be reined in or we will be dipping deeply into the Earnings Reserve Account of the Alaska Permanent Fund, an account that until last year was never used for anything except payment of the annual Permanent Fund dividend.

Many of the key spending decisions will ultimately be made by the Legislature, but the governor writes and proposes the budget on which legislators will ultimately decide. And the various department heads will be on the hot seat as the budget is hammered out.

This week’s stint on the budgetary bun-warmer was Dr. Jim Johnsen, president of the University of Alaska, who must deal with the dual problems of a proposed large budget cut by Governor Dunleavy and the recent loss of national accreditation by the University of Alaska Anchorage School of Education.

The accreditation fiasco was an embarrassing blow that puts a lot of young teachers in a very delicate position. Despite whatever individual efforts they put into their educations, the loss of accreditation will weigh on their credentials at least for the first part of their professional careers.

Wherever the blame needs to rest for the accreditation fiasco — and the university president would seem to be a place to start — a lot of the burden will be borne by young people who certainly deserve better.

This week Johnsen told the Senate Finance Committee that Dunleavy’s proposed cuts to the university budget would reduce state support by 41 percent, from $327 million to $193.1 million. The university’s total budget including all sources, before Dunleavy’s proposed cuts, is an astounding $888.8 million.

Johnsen warned that students are likely to respond to Dunleavy’s cuts (not to mention the School of Education fiasco) by “voting with their feet.” In other words the students would be giving up on the University of Alaska and pursuing their educations at other universities.

Johnsen told the Senate Finance Committee that the university has seen declining enrollment in recent years due to drops in funding. The grim picture he painted included peak enrollment of 21,674 full-time students in the 2011-2012 academic year and a steady decline to 17,555 full-time students in the 2017-2018 school year, the latest year for which figures are available.

The university president said further reductions in state funding will require increasing tuition and fees at school facilities — and that will have a negative impact on enrollment.

My own university years were spent in New England but I’ve always been proud of the fact that one of my sons graduated from the University of Alaska. And now my grandchildren are starting to look at their own higher education — and including the University of Alaska in their lists of possibilities.

It’s difficult for a layman to say who is at fault in the ongoing problems at our university. But it’s important to all Alaskans — young ones, parents and grandparents alike — that the university become and continue to be a great institution of higher learning.