Crisis to Hit Higher Education Without Stimulus Funding

First responders have been vitally important in responding to the coronavirus crisis, but few Americans would put colleges and universities on the list of those institutions vital to the nation’s response. A review of the facts tells a different story.

Many front-line hospitals, especially public ones, are actually part of public higher-education systems. In New York City, at the core of where the virus hit, the State University of New York (SUNY) manages a vitally important hospital in Brooklyn — Downstate Medical Center. Downstate became the first Covid 19-only hospital in the nation. Stony Brook University’s hospital on Long Island is not only taking care of patients that have been seriously affected by the coronavirus, they developed a way to effectively multiply the use of ventilators to serve more than one individual to address a critical shortage.

Colleges and universities have provided housing for first responders, including SUNY’s Fashion Institute of Technology, walking distance from the Javits Center, which was converted into a hospital site for Covid-19 patients. A significant number of other educational institutions have been manufacturing medical equipment, especially masks, needed by health-care systems.

When it comes to research on both a cure and a vaccine, advanced researchers at universities like Duke, MIT, Harvard, Stanford, and SUNY have stepped up. SUNY Buffalo is conducting RNA and genetic sequencing to study the virus to make possible more effective containment, as well as to aid in developing a vaccine. Across the nation, universities quickly moved their best researchers off of existing projects to work on both treatments and vaccines. Without this network of resources, the country would have been hard-pressed to effectively respond to the crisis.

Universities have been and will be vital to defeating the Covid-19 pandemic. And yet, they could also be a major, long-term victim. While many, myself included, have rightly focused on the critical crises that K-12 school closures can have on the 50 million-plus students whose classes have been suspended, a similar crisis could play out in our colleges and universities with long-term effects. As virtually all college classes have shifted online, the quality of education offered to America’s college students has clearly been affected. This is especially true for those most in need, in distressed urban or rural communities, where access to technology and reliable WiF is at best uneven.

Schools are already coping with lower enrollments as a result of declining birth rates. Now, many prospective freshmen may simply be unable to apply to college because their families’ financial circumstances are under strain from dramatic increases in unemployment rates, due to a lack of college readiness resulting from unplanned school closures, or because of overall community instability. Declining enrollment would exacerbate the financial effect of shrinking college attendance. Add to this a decline in international students, many of whom pay full tuition, and severe financial shortfalls are to be expected. All of this could put a hole into college budgets, potentially affecting their ability to serve all of their students.

For public higher-education systems, so vital to a state’s economic success, the crises that have hit state budgets threaten their financial future. This will take place during an economic shift that has put an even greater focus on getting more U.S. students the advanced degrees necessary to succeed. Education is also critically linked to economic growth. In New York state, according to a 2018 study by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, every dollar invested in the state public higher-education system had a return of eight dollars, resulting in a return on investment totaling $26.8 billion. This is a national crisis requiring a national solution.

What can be done? An existing set of financial-aid programs support students’ ability to attend college, including the Pell Grant program and College Work Study. Just like the federal government agreed to assist small businesses, Washington needs to significantly increase funding for both of these programs to address the college affordability issue and bolster attendance. Next, for students facing cancelled high school graduations, the federal government needs to fund a focused summer bridge program to help high schoolers enter college better prepared to succeed. The public college hospitals that spent heavily over the last several months, and will continue to do so, also need discrete financial support, as do the scientific researchers at these critically important campuses.

This last point is particularly significant. As we turn to science for solutions to crises such as a pandemic, it reinforces the need to support science education and the role played by colleges and universities now more than ever.

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