Clipping branch campuses

New Mexico legislators are threatening to close some college campuses to try to reduce spending on higher education.
The Legislative Finance Committee met Oct. 22 in Santa Fe to discuss how to cut down on higher education spending, but focused on concerns regarding funding the state’s 25-plus colleges.

“We have way too many campuses, and campus branches, and branches of these branches, and we’re just not going to be able to continue funding these extensions,” said Sen. Carroll Leavell, a member of the committee.

Leavell said the legislature passed a law in 1998 prohibiting the creation of community colleges or college campuses without legislative approval, but established colleges are still adding branches and extensions of existing campuses without consulting the legislature. He said this law needs to be revisited during the upcoming legislative session in order to make the interpretation more clear.
“We can barely fund the campuses we have, much less more,” Leavell said. “Universities are expanding without asking us if we have the funds to support them, and then they complain that we’re not sufficiently funding them.”

Although he said there is not currently a bill in the works to close branch campuses, Leavell said he has heard “mumblings” among lawmakers asking for branches with duplicate programs to be closed.

“While I’m not in favor of the shutdowns, I think any campuses that do get shut down should not be reopened,” he said. “They were shut down for a reason, and we just can’t continue to support them.”
Not everyone agrees.

Wynn Goering, vice provost for Academic Affairs, said that New Mexico is the nation’s fifth-largest state, but has one of the lowest, most spread-out populations, which makes state branch campuses necessary.

“Having a physical college location in every corner of the state is very important for making higher education a real possibility for as many people as possible,” he said.

Thirty-eight college campuses are spread throughout the state. Of those, 25 are public, state-funded campuses, according to UnivSource.com, which offers an index of all New Mexico public and private colleges, community colleges and universities.
The high number of campuses is an area of concern, said Luciano “Lucky” Varela, the Legislative Finance committee chair.
“This has been and will be a topic of discussion in upcoming meetings and the upcoming legislative session, especially because of the state’s major funding crisis right now,” Varela said.

The committee’s website identifies four areas that account for 78 percent of New Mexico’s $6 billion budget, and one of those areas is higher education. The committee’s principal analyst Paul Aguilar said $792 million was appropriated for higher education expenses for the fiscal year which runs from July 2010-June 2011.
Aguilar said that a committee performance review conducted in August 2010 commended New Mexico for its fiscal support of higher education. It said that New Mexico is a national leader in committing tax efforts and spending toward higher education.
“No other state dedicates more of its citizen’s personal income to higher education than New Mexico,” the review said. “Despite New Mexico’s limited wealth, state-supported appropriations resulted in the third-highest per student funding in the nation for (fiscal year 2008).”
Aguilar said the state does spend enough on higher education.
“For being a relatively poor state, New Mexico actually does spend much more money on its higher education institution than many other states already,” Aguilar said.