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Showstopper at UCO art show, pg. B
ASMS.C presidentialrac' gets hot, pg. 3 Women's soccer team wins three, pg. 10
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Higher education has master plan by Sal Ruibal
Part one of a three part s.eries After less than one day of deliberation, the House Republican caucus voted last week to approve Colorado's higher education budget for the next fiscal year. .,,._. Because the Republicans own 38 out of 65 seats in the House, the caucus vote automatically means the budget will pass when presented to the full General Assembly, . Democrats and all. ~ _. State Rep. Tom Tan~redo (RArvada), chairman of the House Committee on Higher Education, called the caucus vote "a bizarre way to run higher education." ''Here is a budget that affects ._over one hundred thousand .students, thousands of faculty members and hundreds of administrators, and it gets less than a day of consideration,'' he said. Colorado citizens value _,postsecondary education and have .,nvested a great deal of public resources in the schoolin$ of its citizens. The binding caucus vote was but one step in the management of those resources that make Colorado's colleges and univer~ities run. To fully assess what higher education means to this state, con,It.
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sider the following: . • One hundred years ago, oiily 70 students were enrolled in Colorado colleges and universities. In 1980, the Colorado Commission on Higher Education (CCHE) is projecting an enrollment of 154,000. .: • Studies have revealed that Colorado ranks third in the nation in terms of student attendance at public institutions on a ''per 1,000 population" basis. • Approximately 21 cents of every State General Fund tax dollar is e~rmarked for postsecondary education. That comes out to about $92 a year from every man, woman and child in the state. The management of a system as large and expensive as Colorado's higher education machine requires extensive planning and foresight. The state legislature got all that in one big package when it asked the CCHE to develop a statewide· plan for postsecondary education. The CCHE had actually begun the task in 1974 when it mailed 500 letters to individuals throughout the state requesting assistance in ''identifying major issues facing postsecondary education during the next decade." The results of that initial study eve atually became an imposing continued on page 4
Rep. Tom Tancredo: "a bizarre way to run higher education."