Societies that thrive in the future will not do so by trimming their support for the life of the mind. Minnesota needs to compete.
Editor's note: Here are the unabridged remarks of UEA-Duluth's head negotiator, David Schimpf, to the Minnesota House Taxes Committee, which were made on Feb. 27, 2013.
I will give a university perspective on State educational support, because the dimensions of this support shift somewhat across the spectrum from Pre-School through Graduate and Professional School.
It is important to maintain State support that allows original work by public higher education faculty. Call it research, scholarship, creative activity. Why is this important?
- First, this keeps the subject matter that students are taught more current, as faculty remain more tightly attuned to what is going on in their disciplines world-wide. Our best understandings of things are always in revision, as we are reminded by the recent book The Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date. What we teach today will not be 100% correct in the future, but we need to stay as close to that as we can, all the while being honest with students that they should be open to the changes that will come after they leave school.
- Second, students can best learn habits of inquiry and creativity from persons who actually inquire or create with passion. These habits are critical for our civic health, not just for dealing with problems through new techniques. I hope that you agree with me that Minnesota needs engaged citizens who have the initiative to seek further knowledge and perspectives, rethink assumptions (including their own), put reasoning to the test, devise possible alternatives, and communicate clearly, throughout their lives.
- Third, there is economic benefit by fostering a creative and innovative culture. University faculty need to be part of that culture, and the students whom they mentor take that culture into the rest of society. Of course we need more than those faculty and students to get this economic result. The State also needs venture capital and angel investors, it needs a business climate that gives startups a chance, and it needs a nimble job-training system such as the one in our technical colleges. But we do need faculty with the time and resources to stretch boundaries, as part of the system.
Therefore we need to be careful not to push public higher education too hard on the teaching efficiency front. Cutting State appropriations and relying ever more on tuition tends to shift the balance of faculty work time toward a more standardized approach because faculty need to interact with a larger number of students.
Societies that thrive in the future will not do so by trimming their support for the life of the mind. Minnesota needs to compete. I am encouraged by the Governor’s proposal for increased State funding for higher education, and I ask this Committee to craft a taxation system that enables it.
You have a challenging task to deal with a multifaceted tax system.You need to think about both short-term and longer-term effects of any changes in that system. I don’t know how to do that as well as you do, so I won’t give advice. But I urge you to look upon education as investment, and develop State revenue to begin reversing the slide in real-dollar support that began when an economic bubble popped shortly after Minnesota tax rates had been cut.