Connecticut is failing higher education 

The state of Connecticut is tightening its belt around higher education, leading the University of Connecticut to begin fiscal year 2025 with a deficit of $70 million, according to The Daily Campus. UConn President Radenka Maric has stated that the deficit, stemming from nearly $50 million in reduced state support from COVID-19 funds, will result in 15% cuts to academic programs over the next five years. 

The impact of the cuts has led to concerns among the UConn branch of the Association of American University Professors (AAUP) of the “potential for layoffs, departure, or early retirement of faculty members, the closing of graduate programs and the loss of UConn’s R1 research institution classification.” 

The Daily Campus Editorial Board has been vocal about the UConn administration’s exorbitant spending on construction of new dormitories and other facilities despite their knowledge of expiring COVID-19 funds, a charge that is now corroborated by the present budget shortfall. As such, the university’s leaders bear major responsibility for impending program closures and department downsizing, which, as one member of the history department told the Chronicle of Higher Education, would eliminate entire graduate programs without coming close to meeting the required 15% reduction in their operating budget.  

However, when it comes to the supposed lack of funds for public colleges and universities, Governor Ned Lamont and the state legislature don’t exactly have their backs to the wall — the reasoning requires parsing through seven years of tax policy. 

According to in-depth reporting by the CT Mirror, the funding gap faced by public higher education, which includes UConn as well as 17 state universities and community colleges, is a symptom of steep “fiscal guardrails” meant to finance pensions for employees of the state’s large public sector. Since 2017, the state has capped spending to help chop $7.7 billion off its $37 billion in unfunded liabilities. But one cost-saving mechanism — which prohibits the state from spending any revenue collected from businesses that exceeds $3.15 billion — leaves anywhere from hundreds of millions to billions of dollars per year untouchable. The policy enables less spending on services such as healthcare, housing, investments in low-income communities and communities of color and, not least, higher education. In other words, the cost of Connecticut’s pension debt is displaced unto these underserviced social resources. 

This demands the question: How much of state funds have been drained on servicing debt that could have been invested in higher education? 

To make matters — and deficits — worse, the state has provided robust tax incentives to large corporations over the past decade, compounding with ambitious tax cuts to limit the amount of potential support for colleges and universities. 

In 2022, the legislature passed an agreement with Lockheed Martin’s Sikorsky, a manufacturer of military helicopters, providing the company with up to $75 million in tax relief to remain in the state for two decades and keep jobs in the state. Sikorsky later thanked the state for its fealty to the war industry by losing a $7.1 billion contract with the U.S. Army and, in October 2023, laying off 179 employees, short-changing taxpayers on both jobs and revenue. 

In 2014, East Hartford-based manufacturer Pratt & Whitney, which produces engines for commercial and military aircraft, struck an agreement with the state for up to $400 million in tax incentives for remaining in the state up to 2029. In July 2023, the producer’s parent company and fellow weapons manufacturer Raytheon Technologies (RTX) disclosed a malfunction in Pratt & Whitney engines that could cost the company up to $7 billion in lost income — effectively eating its own profits from the past two years and negating the anticipated benefits of the past decade’s tax abatement. 

Other corporate tax relief from the past year include tens of millions to animation studios — whose permanence in Connecticut is uncertain, according to reporting from the CT Mirror — and as much as $100 million to property developers looking to “revitalize” communities (the siren song of gentrification). Households and individuals earning $100,000 may see their taxes decrease by as much as $600, but those savings might be negated entirely if a family member is attending one of the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities increasing tuition by $610. 

Tax cuts for individuals and corporations are generally an incentive to unleash spending and keep jobs and people in the state; however, not only is the evidence that higher taxes lead to more outward migration scant, but Connecticut’s handouts to corporations have failed to solve the fundamental crises facing residents, be they renters, unhoused people or students. Furthermore, the legislature’s parochial mission to slash pension debt and serve the people of the state has done precisely the opposite, penalizing students and faculty of public universities and colleges for decades of fiscal problems they had no part in.