The budget crisis has recently become more of a personal issue for many college students across the Vegas valley. Nevada is currently experiencing a shortfall of $1 billion dollars in the state budget, and after a special session held by the Nevada legislature, state officials are asking the College of Southern Nevada, the 4th largest community college in America, and UNLV, to cut back at least by 25% of their budget. This is a huge cutback that will have severe consequences beginning the fall of 2008 semester.
"Folks are having a hard time with this. The sky is falling," said CSN president Michael Richards at a recent news conference. Cutting 25% of the already thin budget for these two institutions will have extraordinary changes when students come back to school in the following weeks. The question both colleges are facing is what to cut on an already limited budget? Proposed solutions will forever change the Nevada college landscape. UNLV and CSN plan on making drastic changes that is both unfortunate and unavoidable.
Earlier this week, UNLV regrettable laid-off 99 professors and CSN is creating a hiring moratorium and cutting 200 part-time faculty. But, it is only the beginning. Both UNLV and CSN will be cutting classes by around 10%, likely creating a chaotic experience when the tens of thousands of students are unable to take the classes necessary to graduate due to the shortage of professors. This past fall semester, 54% of qualified students were turned away from health services education due to lack of funds and space. Many of the students wanted to enter the nursing program that CSN is well-known for, and could have made a difference in Nevada's increasing nurse shortage. If budget cuts are imposed, CSN is expecting to turn away 8,000 students in the coming semesters. Losing college students will undoubtedly also take it's toll on Nevada's struggling economy.
Students may be down, but they are definitely not out. Students of both UNLV and CSN came together as many hip college students do -- on Facebook. The Facebook group "The Nevada Higher Education Budget Cuts are threatening my future" swelled to 1,000 members strong and took to the streets in a brief protest to show how they felt about the budget cuts. The movement quickly went from local to state-wide in just days with demonstrations sparking all the way up to the University of Nevada in Reno. According to state officials, none of these cuts are set in stone, but the public thinks otherwise. Budget cuts have never been this severe in the higher education sector, and is a wide felt issue among the student community in Nevada.