This past month, we at Ingram’s had the opportunity to host an extraordinary gathering of educators and other interested parties from the bistate region. Among those gathered were many of the chancellors, presidents and top administrators from higher educational institutions, ranging nearly 400 miles from KSU in Manhattan to UMSL in St. Louis.

Obviously, they had a lot on their minds and a lot they wanted to get off their chests. You can read a complete summary of this historic conversation beginning on page 45, but their concerns are ones that we at Ingram’s share.

As we reported a few months ago, the crunch in all university budgets reverberated across the land. And although Kansas is facing some hard times, the budget cuts in Missouri’s public higher education system were catastrophic. Missouri’s General Assembly and its governor, Bob Holden, recently approved a 37% cut in the operating budget of a fiscal year nearly completed.

What happened? Did our elected officials get distracted? Were they eager to get down to the lake? (In Kansas, where there is no lake to speak of, the legislature only cut higher education by approximately 3% despite a comparable budget shortfall.) The state’s action has devastated the morale at institutions throughout Missouri and prophesies an even bleaker future.

Interestingly, higher education in Missouri accounts for less than 12 percent of the state’s $19 billion budget. As University of Missouri System President Manuel Pacheco pointed out in a luncheon presentation, the Missouri budget is so structurally flawed that when revenues dip, it is almost inevitable that higher education absorbs a disproportionate percent of the shortfall, a shortfall they never quite make up. Some budget lines are untouchable by law. And others—health care, prisons, K-12—are politically radioactive.

Still, for all the constraints, I have to question if our elected officials made a good-faith effort to address the crisis. Or did they merely single out higher ed because it was politically safer than other targets?
It didn’t have to be like this. State officials might, for instance, have negotiated a loan to higher ed against the state’s Rainy Day fund so that the shock to the system would not have been as severe. Given the depth of that shock, we also have to wonder how it was that no one did any serious contingency planning for even a relatively modest decline in state revenues. Did our officials presume revenues would only and always go up?

At the core of the state’s reckless budget slashing is a profound ignorance of what higher education does for the state. It is, in fact, the engine that drives economic development and investment in our region. Truth be told, without a strong higher education system, we have little to sell prospective companies to attract them to the region—especially companies dealing in intellectual capital—nor will companies that are here be compelled to stay.

Our larger universities will be less able to attract the kind of talent that can deliver research work and dollars to the area. This means, of course, that the Life Sciences Initiative, the most promising cooperative venture in a generation, could soon be no more than a paper tiger—all puns intended.

On a more practical level, workforce development will be severely hamstrung. This means colleges will be able to play a far less aggressive, participatory role in the recruitment of new business—and retention of those they work with now. On the pages within, the educators make a strong case for the indispensable role their institutions play in the area’s economy.

Universities will have to make some hard choices. To prove their worth, they may have to prune away certain programs that do not have an obvious economic payback, like arts and humanities and social science departments. But regardless of how one feels about these programs—and the university as a whole for that matter—they deserve at least careful consideration, not the hasty, last-minute, back-of-the-hand treatment they got at the hand of the people who collect their taxes.

It’s time for the citizens of Missouri and Kansas, especially the business community and alumni of these schools, to stand up and say, "We’re mad as hell, and we won’t take it any more." Let this MU alum, and an advocate of higher education, be among the first to voice this concern.

I’m curious of your thoughts. Sincerely,