Budget cuts

Radical Teacher, Summer, 2005

A special report of February 8, 2005 by the California Institute for Federal Policy Research breaks down the implications for California of President Bush's budget proposal for fiscal year 2006 in terms of Vocational and Adult Education, Pell Grants, Campus-Based Aid (CBA) Programs, Leveraging Educational Assistance Partnership (LEAP), and Higher Education Institutional Aid, including TRIO and GEAR UE A similar report can be found in AFT On Campus (March 2005, www.aft.org).

On April 6, 2005, 30 students from Columbia, Barnard, and Cornell went to Washington, DC, to lobby Congressional leaders to restore cuts to higher education. Adding personal stories to facts and figures, the students tried to convince their legislatures of the importance of federal funding for success in college (www. columbiaspectator.com).

"Full-time faculty cuts reverberate at UMass" (Boston Globe, February 22, 2005) explains how the "decline in permanent, full-time professors at UMass-Amherst, accompanied by increased numbers of temporary and part-time teachers, echoes a national trend on college campuses." According to the American Association of University Professors, the number of temporary faculty nationwide grew by one-third from 1998 to 2001 and today stands at one-half of all college faculty.