Just weeks after the one-year anniversary of his decision to stay at ETSU and decline the chancellorship of the Tennessee Board of Regents, President Stanton is optimistic that the funding deficit for state higher education will eventually be resolved.
“I really believe that’s going to happen,” Stanton said in an interview Friday. That the state only funds education at 85.5 percent of the rate it did in 1990 “is becoming seen as a major problem.”
The optimism is not likely the result of last week’s clearance of a major hurdle by the proposed state lottery.
On Wednesday, the Tennessee Senate passed a resolution, 22-11, calling for citizens to be allowed a referendum on the lottery ban in 2002.
“I have mixed feelings about a lottery,” Stanton said. “I don’t know right now how I would personally vote for it.
“I think (a lottery) can be positive. I don’t think it’s the panacea.
“As far as day-to-day operating dollars go, I don’t see it as being the answer,” he said.
Whether it be through a lottery or some other method, Stanton, though, is still vehement that more state funding be directed to education.
“We do need more resources from the state, there’s no question about it,” Stanton said. “Students are now paying a much bigger piece (of their education).”
Indeed, ETSU’s tuition has increased 17 percent in the last two years, and the University of Tennessee’s cost has risen by 23 percent during that period.
To help remedy the burden, Stanton suggested the state diversify its tax base and make education more of a priority.
“I think when you depend on a single tax base such as sales tax, you’re not going to make it successfully,” Stanton said. “It hurts everyone more than, say, an income tax, and yet this region is very opposed to an income tax, and I understand that position. I’d hate to be a legislator right now caught in the middle of it. But I think as times of recession come by, a sales tax base will make things worse.”
Regardless of where revenue comes from, however, Stanton insists that education come before roads and prisons in the state budget.
“Suppose there are never anymore revenue dollars . you can still reprioritize education,” Stanton said. “At some point (you must) reprioritize education up the ladder.
“There’d be a whole lot less prison cells needed if we had more people getting an education.”
Under the current structure, Tennessee lags behind the nation in funding for higher education, ranking in the bottom five.
“We’re near the bottom of the country, which is nonsense,” Stanton said. “If every state had one major university football team . what if they were 47th out of 50 in the nation? The president would be fired, the coach would be fired, people would come out of the woodwork to get them up to the Top 10. But higher education and K-12 in Tennessee is 46th, 47th in the nation, and I don’t see people coming out of the woodwork.”
That school funding is relatively low gives Tennessee a black eye, Stanton said. To the rest of the nation “it appears that education is not valued” in Tennessee.
That image, along with tuition increases, has spurred come a decrease in enrollment, according to Stanton.
Enrollment fallen from 10,821 graduate and undergraduate students in fall 2000 to an estimated 10,087 in spring 2001, and has decreased year-to-year since fall 1998.
“We’re still a good buy compared to some of the other states around us,” Stanton said. Yet he noted that “it has an effect” that some surrounding states, including Virginia, have actually decreased tuition in recent years.
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