Reconsider CSU budget
By the Dayton Daily News
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Notwithstanding its protests, Central State University got walloped in the state budget that passed the Ohio House of Representatives. If the school isn’t treated better by the Ohio Senate, this could be the beginning of the end.
Besides cutting $800,000 from the school’s budget for next year, the House also decided that, beginning in 2007, a special supplement that represents 30 percent of CSU’s operating budget should be put into a newly created pot that would take in virtually all of the state money Ohio’s public universities get. The House then wants the schools to haggle among themselves about how those funds should be divided.
The apparent goal of the exercise is to make colleges confront the fact that some of them are engaging in similar work and that duplication is costly — for them. Meanwhile, legislators could avoid picking winners and losers.
Such a process would particularly disadvantage Central State. Ohio’s other schools aren’t going to look out for it. It’s the state’s smallest university and the only historically black public college.
In light of its small size, and recognizing that Central State can’t possibly have the economies of scale of Ohio State or Ohio University, the Legislature long ago committed to setting aside the special aid that the school could end up losing in the proposed free-for-all.
Central State is an important institution to Ohio, to blacks and to Dayton — and this threat is serious. When some in the 1990s wanted to close the school because of a scandal, then-Gov. George Voinovich refused to hear of it.
He insisted the school did too much good, that black young people needed it as an option.
He sent capable people to the school to clean house, and he appointed committed trustees. The trustees then hired President John Garland, who has succeeded in restoring the school’s proud reputation. Since then, the school has done everything it has been asked to do.
How many times does this story have to be told and re-told before Central State can stop having to justify its existence?
Since 1994, tiny Central State with its 1,622 students, has turned out 13 percent of all the bachelor’s degrees earned by blacks at Ohio’s 13 four-year public institutions.
Meanwhile, more than half of its students come from families with annual incomes under $30,000. What about Central State doesn’t Ohio need?
While Ohio has been starving Central State (and its colleges generally), other states have been investing in their historically black institutions.
In 1976, Norfolk State University got $14.6 million in state money and tuition. By 2000, that number had climbed to almost $74 million. (Norfolk’s tuition is comparable to CSU’s.)
Over that same period, Florida A&M University’s state money and tuition went from $20.7 million to nine times that — $185.7 million. (Its tuition is less than CSU’s.)
Meanwhile, in these same 25 years, Central State’s state aid and tuition climbed from $10 million to $37.8 million. Its spending for 2006-07 will be less than $35 million.
Central State deserves to exist and to be supported. Gov. Bob Taft and the Legislature can’t let Central State’s budget be cut in ways that guarantees it can’t possibly succeed.
Torch note: Nearly 50 CSU students traveled to Columbus May 31, 2005, lobbying senators to restore funding to the university.
As of presstime, lawmakers hadn’t yet finalized the budget.
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