Higher education got a couple of messages in the last few days about where it stands in Idaho, and hints of where it might go. Taken together, the meaning is unmistakable.
One data point came in an obvious place: the legislature, and more specifically the budget-writing Joint Finance Appropriations Committee. On March 25 the committee was considering its final round (the procedure has gotten more complex the last couple of years) of budgeting for higher education, at a time when - it should be reminded - the state is flush with revenue and student populations and other activities at the institutions are expanding.
The committee has approved, more or less, a sliver of an increase for higher education generally. But on March 25, some of the members argued for dropping the ongoing funding for the University of Idaho and Boise State University by $2 million. (Back in the day, JFAC carefully avoided budgeting for individual institutions to avoid regional conflicts; but never mind.)
That $2 million is only a small piece of either university’s budget. Senator Codi Galloway of Boise, who opposed the move, accurately said, “The money here is not very important.” Galloway continued: “$2 million, when you take the balance out, the money is small. A message we send is big. If we ask our agencies to make changes, they make significant changes and we refuse to change course with them, then our power of the purse is no longer relevant.”
Well, accurate except maybe for the last few words, because ...
What was the problem the legislature was trying to telegraph here? One of the cut backers, Representative Josh Tanner of Eagle, said “I’ve had a real tough time with universities. The more I dig in, the more frustrated I actually get. The more I actually look into – whether you look into the DEI aspects, critical race theory, the actual professors and some of the classes that are actually being taught – it saddens me to see the direction that our universities have taken.”
The one specific he mentioned here was DEI. But Galloway and others pointed out that the legislature has already acted against DEI, while the state board of education and the institutions have acted to cut it back even before being required to. (Obeying in advance, in other words.) Messaging on that subject was received and has been acted upon some time ago. As, quite reasonably, per Galloway: “We cannot ask people to make change, watch them make change and then continue to punish them.”
JFAC was deeply split on the cuts, which (because of the way one co-chair but apparently not the other interprets the now-complicated voting rules) was then sent to the Senate floor for action. Whatever the floor does, what you’re seeing here is something way short of a full-throated endorsement of higher education in Idaho - in fact, quite the opposite.
Now, the second recent news item, from March 20: The hiring of the new president of the University of Vermont - Marlene Tromp, who since 2019 has held the counterpart job at Boise State University.
She has an overall good track record at BSU, probably excellent if you consider the political environment she has faced, but people I’ve talked with were less surprised that she left than that she stayed so long. In many places (Vermont for example), and in the Idaho of years ago, the college and universities were seen as crown jewels in the state. Now they’re viewed - in many halls of power at least - as objects of disgust to be kicked at and hacked apart.
What does that suggest about the applicants to replace Tromp at BSU? For all Boise State’s recent growth and variety of successes, who would want the grief, or the risk that the institution might be wrecked under a DOGE-style administration?
Says a lot about the future, for a while at least, of higher education in Idaho.
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