Students and faculty a few blocks away from Yale are being unjustly punished. Because of the corruption of a bankrupt system run by inept individuals, the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities — CSCU — system is facing a “fiscal cliff.” The federal aid provided to alleviate the effects of COVID-19 will expire in September 2024, meaning there will be a $140 million education budget deficit. But this insurmountable obstacle is just one piece of the picture. 

Funding for CSCU per student has decreased 21 percent since 2008, leaving schools that have been severely underfunded for longer than a decade. In order to prevent two community colleges from being shut down, the Connecticut Board of Regents (BOR) decided to merge all the individual colleges into one mega-institution, despite a opposition petition signed by 1,400 members of the CSCU community and joint opposition statements from all five unions under the CSCU umbrella.

The members of the BOR — former CEOs, venture capitalists and union-busting lawyers with no backgrounds in education — are running the CSCU system like a failing business, and it is no surprise that students and teachers are being punished the most. Tuition for students will be raised thousands of dollars, and more than 650 full-time educators along with 3,500 part-time employees will lose their jobs. The ramifications of this will mean great increases in class sizes and the cutting of special education and mental health programs, along with extreme burdens placed on professors who won’t be compensated for their increased responsibilities.

Meanwhile, Connecticut lawmakers are planning to swell the state’s “rainy day fund” from $3.3 billion to $4 billion by 2025 — apparently bailing out the state’s failing education system is not worthy of emergency funding. 

Austerity measures are taken periodically, because the contradictions of capitalism inevitably lead to underpaid workers, those who produce the commodities, not being able to afford the excessive amount of products and services they collectively create. This is called underconsumption, which induces a period of economic decline, and austerity measures are taken by governments at all levels. They raise taxes and cut government spending to balance a budget deficit. They create a vicious cycle of poverty for the working class. As the most vulnerable members of our society, austerity measures deny public goods which should be free or affordable to poor citizens, worsening their financial insecurity.  

Another example of austerity measures burdening the working class is after the 2008 recession in the United States. Forty-three states cut higher education spending, 31 states cut health care services and 44 states cut employee compensation. According to a 2020 study from the Center of Law and Social Policy, quite a few states used the budget crisis and lack of federal aid to underfund social security nets and “actively implement anti-worker policies.” The study highlights the Florida unemployment insurance system, which “was essentially designed to limit benefits and deny claims.” It continues, “Nine other states cut the duration of unemployment insurance benefits after 2011, leaving their systems woefully underfunded and unprepared in today’s crisis.” The report goes on to emphasize that the states with the worst unemployment services had the highest concentrations of Black and Latinx workers in low-paying jobs. Austerity measures are one of the primary factors that maintain institutional racism.

In the case of CSCU schools, rising cost of living and stagnant wages make it difficult for students of working class families to pursue public higher education as tuition increases. With college enrollment declining, the schools run deficits to cover the cost of under-enrollment and pass these costs back on to the working class by cutting education spending and raising tuition. These measures inevitably force more students out of the public higher education pool and perpetuates the cycle. Even worse, the CSCU spending cuts are not unique to Connecticut public universities. There is a nationwide trend of slashing budgets for higher education. 

Although it is very unlikely that the ruling elite who control the BOR have a shred of sympathy for anyone outside their wealthy clique, these austerity measures are not taken because of their disdain for the students and teachers being affected by their policies. They are taken because the government is an organ of class control: it is run by capitalists to serve their interests against the interest of the workers. Such is the nature of the state under capitalism. While thousands of students and teachers have been kicked to the curb, Connecticut saw its defense spending increase by $3 billion in 2022 per the orders of the White House, so more weapons can be sent to fund imperialist wars and genocides.

A system that is incapable of educating its populace or increasing their standard of living is not fit to continue. Let’s be clear: the resources are available to cover this $140 million deficit. Simply pulling a fraction out of the “rainy day fund” or public expenditure on defense could cover the deficit easily. It is time to stop begging the capitalists for piecemeal reforms to problems they can easily solve. Instead, we ought to consider who decides where state funds are disubstituted: the capitalists or the people who have to foot the bill for the problems their system created?  

SEBASTIAN WARD is a sophomore in Timothy Dwight College. Contact him at sebastian.ward@yale.edu.