
Blindsided by a Devastating Veto, Alaska University System Pleads for Lifeline - Anon84
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/07/us/alaska-university-budget-cuts.html
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bunnyrooroo
Hello,

I actually live in Alaska. I'm quite concerned about how the NY Times
portrayed this.

While I don't agree with all of the cuts to the University or the budget as a
whole, the way this is being portrayed is interesting.

If veto holds, and the cuts to the University take effect, Alaska will still
spend 3 times as much per student than the average state. Yes, you heard that
correct, Alaska will still contribute 3 times as much in state funding, per
student, to their college students than the average state in the lower 48.
Going to college for in state residents is one of the lowest tuition rates in
the nation for a state school.

Secondly, it didn't get mentioned that Alaska has one University system. There
are an amazing amount of redundancies in the system that could eliminated for
greater efficiencies and savings.

Lastly, it rarely gets mentioned that the UA system has a huge amount of
administrative overhead costs. I attended the UA system and there always seems
to be quadruple the administrative staff to actually teaching/research going
on.

The last thing I would say is that the State legislatures did a very poor job
of overspending while oil prices were good and then when the price of oil
dropped, boom!, we had a deficit.

Better fiscal restraint and spending prior to the price of oil dropping would
have saved a lot of his heartache.

Not to mention that Alaska is dependent on oil for its current existence and
once fossil fuel use is eliminated, this state will lose 75% of its residents.

Just my two cents.

~~~
doctorpangloss
Another interpretation of your exact data is that this great amount of funding
paid off, it educated you and attracted talented people to University of
Alaska.

~~~
bunnyrooroo
UA is a decent University System, but not more than that.

In fact, a few months ago, the University of Alaska Anchorage lost
accreditation for their teacher program. Yes, you read that correctly. The
largest University in Alaska lost their accreditation for a program that is
one of the most needed in the state.

Getting people to teach in Alaska is a major issue for obvious reasons, and
the largest university in the state did such a poor job that they lost their
ability to graduate licensed teachers.

~~~
bduerst
>the largest university in the state did such a poor job that they lost their
ability to graduate licensed teachers.

Maybe you can help me understand this, but how is the solution to cut funding
further by 41%?

~~~
bunnyrooroo
I actually don't agree with the severity if the cut, but the University System
in Alaska is known for overspending and the massive amount of administrative
jobs that don't go into the education of young minds.

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willk
This feels really short sighted, all for an increased annual payout to
residents that won't cover the cost of sending students to higher education.

~~~
surge
The way I heard it described, the annual payout will increase, where as that
money now goes towards social programs primarily aimed at children and
families. So while that money will be in citizen's pockets, it likely won't
get spent in a manner that will benefit society long term.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> social programs primarily aimed at children and families

> it likely won't get spent in a manner that will benefit society long term.

I don't understand how you reconcile these two statements. Social safety nets
benefit society long term.

~~~
slowmovintarget
... the poster you quote was saying the money will go into pockets instead of
safety nets and this is likely for the worse. The statements are already
reconciled.

The phrasing might have been a bit confusing, and this could lead one to think
there was a conflict, but this was an agreement post.

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joshe
Worth pointing out that the money from the cuts goes to the Alaska Permanent
Fund dividends at about $3,000 per year (instead of $1,600). Each permanent
resident gets that every year. It's about a third of the universal basic
income proposals ($10,000).

Unusual to have such a stark trade off between a progressive program and the
ballooning cost of education.

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pbreit
Unpopular opinion: there's probably a lot of fat to be cut and this is
possibly the only way to do it.

Prediction: The most customer-unfriendly trimming will come first.

~~~
save_ferris
Cutting the budget by 41% just isn't responsible, no matter how you slice it.

The governor is explicitly making this cut in order to increase the oil
revenue dividend for residents to $3K per year.

~~~
pbreit
It wasn't the budget that was cut by 41%, just the government's contribution.
There's still tuition, bonds, etc.

~~~
scifi6546
That is still a huge cut to UA. The quality of education and research will be
severely hurt by that cut. Many of the education programs do not make money
and that is fine because they provide an important service to the state. That
is creating smart people who work in AK rather than leaving AK forever

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gnusty_gnurc
Hard to feel bad for any higher-ed institutions nowadays. It's clear that
degrees are essentially signaling that's captured by outrageously bloated,
rent-seeking institutions. I'm completely sympathetic to the idealism that
colleges are vital institutions of education, but there's something
systemically wrong with college price, criminally so, and the issue isn't just
"we're not spending enough."

~~~
scifi6546
UA is nothing like a corporation it is tied to the state. Yes it has quite a
bit of waste but fundamentally the institutions goal is to do research and to
educate

~~~
DuskStar
Fundamentally the goal of UA is to survive and grow, like all other
organizations. If research and education furthers that goal, then that's what
it'll attempt to do - but if bloat and cost disease further that goal expect
to see those too.

~~~
scifi6546
surprisingly a lot of the people there actually care about science and some
people care about teaching

~~~
DuskStar
Oh, of course - but individual goals are not organisational imperatives.

~~~
scifi6546
Not always. UA is composed of many sub groups. They usually have little to do
with each other. Some of these groups are very wastefull and just try to
further their existance. But a large portion of the groups are actually
concerned with doing things in the real world. I do not want to give specific
examples but I have plenty of experience with people that actually want to do
good things in the world at UA.

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ijpoijpoihpiuoh
Perhaps this makes me a terrible person, but I sometimes half hope to see
things like this go through. The people of Alaska asked for this, and it will
be interesting to see if they like getting what they asked for. The main
reason it's only "half-hope" rather than fully hoping is that the damage from
this will still affect people who didn't vote in favor of it. Those kids at
the university deserve a better education than they'll get presuming the cut
is allowed to stand.

Alternately, if I'm wrong about the value of austerity, and these deep cuts do
allow the economy of Alaska to grow, that would also be interesting to learn.
Previous recent experiments in this approach, particularly Kansas', don't seem
to encourage much hope. But I'd be a fool to believe that you can take
budgetary changes and trailing economic results in isolation. The system is
far more complicated than that.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _The people of Alaska asked for this_

Well, kind of. I know this is more of a meta-question about government and
democracy, etc., but this was a unilateral action by one elected official:

> _Gov. Mike J. Dunleavy shocked the state last month by using a veto to cut
> much deeper, taking away $130 million more from the system that gave him his
> master’s degree._

~~~
ijpoijpoihpiuoh
If you vote for a budget hawk, he wins, and then he does budget hawk things,
in my book, that's getting what you asked for. It's true that you don't get to
choose the exact shape of what you are getting, but you do get to choose the
general direction. The people know or should know that, and vote accordingly.

It would be different if, for example, they voted for a tax and spend Democrat
and then, when elected, that official had made deep budget and tax cuts.

~~~
mikeyouse
145,000 people voted for this governor, 125,000 people voted for his opponent.
Now all of those people are going to be impacted by these huge cuts to the
university system. "They voted for this" ignores that many people voted
against it and will be harmed nonetheless.

~~~
magduf
Sorry, but that's how democracy works. Do you have any suggestions for a
political system that somehow lets a minority of voters get the executive they
want while the majority simultaneously gets the executive they want? It just
isn't feasible to have different executives, with different agendas and
budgetary goals, running the same region. Maybe if the two groups of people
want to move to separate sides of the state and split the state, they could be
happy, but that's not realistic; most likely the two different groups of
voters are all living among each other.

