Graduate Senator's Response to Budget Cut

The budget cuts that have been imposed by the Georgia State Legislature and subsequently proposed by the University System of Georgia will indeed change the landscape of higher education in Georgia in general and graduate education in particular. The logical starting point is to ask, "why education?" The legislature must know the value of a higher education and also the value of an educated public. An educated public adds value to a state, not only in its ability to make decisions but also in its ability to draw employment opportunity, which helps maintain its municipalities and associated services. Alternately, we proponents of education have proposed, what we detest as an American public, are taxes, which help pay for our municipalities. There have been calls for increased taxes on somewhat arbitrary goods, such as cigarettes and (non) carbonated drinks. Thus, the current economic downturn, assumes better times will come, but no one knows when those times will come, rendering us all uncertain. No one has answers to how we get out of this conundrum: raise taxes on seemingly arbitrary goods and services or cut back on goods/services/jobs. The constellation of alternatives seem numerous, but time is of the essence.

After laying out the general terms of our economic situation, we see the consequences play out in the request for UGA to cut another 60 million dollars from a budget which has already cut 100 million dollars from its budget over the past two years. To be fair, the Georgia legislature sees a need to cut spending and does not want to tax citizens in a recession, but simultaneously views the lives of students as decadent and ultimately more able to sacrifice for the greater good of the state, at-large.

As a graduate student, the prospect of cutting "all non-contract teach faculty" seems ominous for those are currently serving in a para-professional role. As para-professionals, we take classes as students and we also serve the university in various roles as less-than-well-paid workers. This middle position creates, again, uncertainty for graduate education. Such uncertainty is focused on the lack of specificity and the dearth in overt mention of graduate students in the University's proposal. As a result, a proliferation of questions arises: will the cutting of non-contract teach faculty mean an increase in teaching/graduate/research assistants? Are graduate students categorized as non-contract faculty? How does this affect those in-coming or newly accepted graduate students to UGA? Will this mean a mass exodus of tenured and tenure-track faculty, whom graduate students depend on for research opportunities and the like? In other words, how will the current proposed budget cuts affect graduate education at the University of Georgia?

Contributed by: Marcus Coleman, Graduate School Senator