E-mail Story
Print Friendly Front Page 
opinion guest_columns
Friday, April 08, 2011
UNM Students, Faculty Are United
By Lazaro Cardenas And Richard L. Wood
President, ASUNM President, UNM Faculty Senate
Despite efforts by the Albuquerque Journal editorial page to portray a divide between students and faculty at the University of New Mexico — "Sparing UNM Faculty at Students' Expense" on March 28 — we remain united in our position regarding the university's budget. Our position can be summarized in three points:
• The university's budget must be funded adequately to prevent further damage to our teaching, learning and research. This is especially difficult given the 19 percent cut in state funding that UNM has suffered in two years.
• Tuition and fee increases must be kept to the minimum necessary to sustain academic excellence at our flagship research university. This is especially important, given the still-weak job market and heavy debt burdens that many students face.
• The university budget must be prioritized appropriately, with funding for the core academic mission consistently given precedence over less central expenditures.
The UNM community has made significant progress in refashioning how budget decisions are made and in articulating and enforcing the values and priorities that should guide the decision-making process. We need to make more progress on that front, and the support of all parts of New Mexican society can help us do so.
But some forms of intervention are not helpful as we struggle to rebuild funding for our teaching, learning and research.
• The state government's practice of taking a "tuition credit" against the money paid by university students and their parents represents a kind of tax against higher education. While the Legislature made progress this year in improving how the tuition credit occurs, its ongoing use undermines our institution.
• The idea that state budget difficulties should be addressed by de-funding higher education, on the assumption that we can turn to students and parents to make up the funding, undermines the promise that higher education offers: upward mobility for less-privileged young people.
• Current efforts by political actors to dictate how universities use their funding fails to understand the difference between higher education institutions and other state agencies. American universities have thrived and contributed to decades of economic growth precisely because they have had autonomy from political interference.
Given the difficulties UNM faces, also unhelpful is the misportrayal of student-faculty relations as some kind of power struggle over funding. We share priorities and have worked hard to implement them within the university community's decision-making process. We will continue to do so in the years ahead, as UNM rebuilds itself as the outstanding research university that the state of New Mexico needs.
You also can send comments via our comment form
|
|
