By:  Doug Busselman, Executive Vice President

Over the past couple of days we’ve been presenting thoughts on the need for Nevada citizens to be more aware of the details regarding Nevada education financing.  We are urged by advocates of increased financial support that education (K-12 and Higher Education) that possible budget cuts are beyond the realm of possibilities – such reductions will have devastating impacts to not only our state overall, but long-term for future generations as well.

We’ve attempted to hold off the budget reduction vs tax increases, at least until we have a good basis for understanding what current spending is buying and then seeking clear priority thinking of what specifically is missing that needs further funding. 

As we’ve also indicated, Nevada Farm Bureau has policy direction, which seeks additional support for higher education areas.  Our policy supports greater funding emphasis for the College of Agriculture, Biotechnology, and Natural Resources; Nevada Cooperative Extension; the agricultural programs at the Great Basin College in Elko; and, applied agricultural research in general.  The likelihood of the Nevada Higher Education System placing agriculture programs on a higher level of funding is remote (even in good financial times), but this doesn’t change the point that we are also part of the crowd that would like to see more dollars and cents headed to higher education.

No, We Don’t Want Tax Increases…

If we are to believe that the “coin” in question has only two sides – budget reductions or tax increases – we also would need to clarify that we have member-developed/member adopted policy which puts our organization in opposition to a wide array of taxes that might not yet be available as well as increases in those taxes which are.

Tax Increases For The Sake Of Higher Educational Dollars Not A Good Approach:

While we haven’t had the chance to dig into the specifics of the outline we’ve laid out over the past couple of days, we’ve been able to turn to the research work of the Nevada Policy Research Institute to retrieve several insightful pieces that they’ve put together over the past several months on the subject.

Steven Miller’s, August 6, 2008 commentary piece “Spend More and Get Less” http://www.npri.org/publications/spend-more-and-get-less  featured the findings of a leading economist, Dr. Richard Vedder, who wrote, “the overwhelming majority (of results) show a statistically significant negative correlation between state government appropriations and economic growth – the more states spend on higher education, the lower the growth in personal income per capita in future time periods.”

A couple of weeks later (August 26th, 2008) Miller again wrote on the topic of Nevada’s higher education system, this time raising the point that through the process of aligning Nevada budget priorities, a complete re-evaluation of the higher education system model is in order http://www.npri.org/publications/public-higher-education-in-nevada-needs-a-basic-rethinking.

In agricultural terms, our support for the approach of the Great Basin College agricultural program is an example of this rethinking process – as opposed to having real expectations that the University of Nevada, College of Agriculture, Biotechnology and Natural Resources will somehow change their approach to providing agricultural educational opportunities.

Lastly, we can’t help but also pass along the link to connect you to Patrick Gibbons’ commentary, “Real Solutions For Higher Education”  http://www.npri.org/publications/real-solutions-for-higher-education   This piece really rounds out the perspective that Nevada’s Higher Education System should be challenged to re-examine itself and seek a vision that puts it on a different track than just looking to back up the truck at the Nevada Legislature and haul away all that it can get.