Nevada State 
Carnage ... er, College

By Doug French

The first edition of The Black & Gold: A Publication For Friends of Nevada State College has been mailed out (at taxpayer expense) and is now in the hands of movers and shakers throughout the Las Vegas valley. It seems incredible but evidently students will actually be graduating from the college next spring.

A front-page article of the Black & Gold entitled “Gearing Up for Graduation” features Q and A’s with three of the five students who are graduating next spring. Milissa Avila, a Teacher Preparation Program student said “[my husband] jokes with me that if I head up the Nevada State College Alumni Association, I will only have to call four other people for our reunions, at least for now.” I doubt taxpayers think it’s a joke to spend millions of dollars to graduate five students—three in the Teacher Preparation Program and two in psychology.

Also on the front page is an article describing what will be the college’s first new building, a 90,000 square foot, H-shaped, multi-story building with classrooms, faculty offices, labs, etc. The cost of the building has been estimated at $23.4 million. Of course, they are still raising money for this project and best case won’t start until spring 2005, so any cost estimate at this point is worthless. The building will supposedly accommodate the expected 2006 enrollment of 2,200 students. Enrollment this fall was 530 students with 323 being full-time.

NSC President Kerry Romesburg wrote in his “President’s Message” that the college “is roughly 60 percent, or $14.4 million, towards its $23.4 million goal. That’s one way to look at, I suppose. But, a cynical view is that $1.4 million has been raised of the $10 million in private funds that the college must raise for the construction of the building. The other $13 million is to be provided by the taxpayers, an appropriation made by the 2001 legislature. The clock is ticking loudly for Mr. Romesburg as he only has until March 2005 to raise another $8.6 million. Romesburg has raised 14 percent of his goal, not 60 percent.

The real scary part of the Black & Gold is the projections for student body growth and the campus required. According to Romesburg; “The current master plan for the college is being developed for a twenty-year build-out to accommodate as many as 25,000 students.” The city of Henderson has set aside a 600-acre parcel for the campus to accommodate a school that would be the size of UNLV. Can you imagine how much that’s going to cost?

Historically, 19 to 20 percent of Nevada’s budget is spent on higher education. The higher education budget for the 2004/2005 biennium is just over $2.5 billion. That’s a smooth $1.25 billion per year to fund UNR, UNLV and CCSN. In the fall of 2000, the University system had a total of 49,190 full-time equivalent students. Let’s assume by now there are 60,000 students; that means each student costs the taxpayer $20,833. Of course, in twenty years the cost per student will be much higher, but you get the idea—25,000 more students today would mean $521 million more in tax dollars needed from your wallets.

How on earth is the average taxpayer to benefit from these huge expenditures on higher education? They don’t. For instance, if your next door neighbor has a college degree that person's degree provides no benefit to you. Your neighbor is likely benefited for having an education, but you are not benefited by his degree. Nor would you benefit more if all of your neighbors graduated from UNLV rather than if they all graduated from Stanford or if they all graduated from Vo Tech, for that matter.

Nevadans would be better off if they could keep the $1.25 billion that is spent on higher education each year and let businesses import college graduates from other states. Also, Nevada citizens lose tax dollars by educating people and exporting them to other states. The state should get out of the higher education business all together.

One can understand why those in government want more universities to fund and a larger government. But, it’s hard to understand businessmen who support projects like the Nevada State College that are so damaging to taxpayers. The chief fund-raiser for the new college is Bill Martin, president of Nevada State Bank. You would think a guy like Martin would be adamantly opposed to taxation and increased government waste. Evidently not; Mr. Martin is trying to convince people to hand over their money voluntarily to help fund a project that in the long term must be funded involuntarily by taxpayers.

The Nevada State College is an example of the low-hanging fruit that can easily be picked from the state’s budget. Plus, if the project is not stopped now, in twenty years the taxpayers will be paying hundreds of millions more; never to see a return for their money.