Ask any young student about the importance of technology and they all know the answer. Ask any economist how important technology is in the struggle for global economic viability and the answers will all be the same.
Technology will impact the future for individuals, government, businesses, health care, public safety, education and every country on the planet.
It would be hard to find any individual or organization that disagrees. Yet, a recent report tells us that almost a third of the nation’s public universities are experiencing information technology (IT) budget cuts. How can that be? What is more important? Who is making these decisions?
In a survey of chief information officers and senior IT officers in more than 300 colleges and universities nationwide, 63 percent of the respondents said IT funding is lagging and has never recovered from the Great Recession. Some reported that not only had their budgets for the current and coming year been cut, but they have also been forced to absorb mid-year cuts. One-third of those budget cuts reported were from public universities. What are budget writers thinking?
In Texas, appropriations for higher education for FY 2016-17 got a slight increase over the budgeted amount for the previous biennium. However, the total share of higher education funding provided by the state has been trending downward for many years. The Texas Legislature provided The University of Texas at Austin with 47 percent of its funding in 1984-85. Today, that percentage has now dropped to only about 12 percent. When overall higher education funding is reduced at the state level, cuts have to be absorbed at the campus level, and IT spending may be among the casualties.
Over a five-year period from 2008 to 2013, public universities in Texas graduated more than 36,000 students with IT-related degrees. That results in a ranking of #2 in IT services employment nationwide for the state. That’s impressive! And it reaps economic benefits of all kinds for the state.
Information technology contributes to the Texas economy in a myriad of ways. It creates an attraction for technology firms as well as high-tech professionals. And that results in an attraction for companies in every industry sector because they all want, and need, technology expertise.
Reducing technology budgets at public universities in a world where technology is perhaps the greatest driver of economic competitiveness does not make sense. Colleges and universities play a critical role in economic vitality of any state.
Attracting top talent to institutions of higher education, providing the workforce skills that all companies crave, preventing cyberattacks at every level of government, augmenting public safety and delivering services of all types depend on that technology – where else will states get this kind of involvement if public universities are limited in their funding resources?
States must remain competitive when it comes to technology. So, for goodness sake, let’s make sure that we adequately fund technology resources at our public universities. Technology is our future – and funding is critical.
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