Title of Artifact: “HIGHER EDUCATION BUDGETS AND THE GLOBAL RECESSION: Tracking Varied National Responses and Their Consequences”
Summary: This article was written by a Berkley professor, John Aubrey Douglass, on February 2010. The article explores how governments have reacted to the recession in cutting or funding higher education with a focus on California. It argues that states cutting funding to higher education will in the long run stunt economic growth particularly when the opposite should be happening. He makes comparisons to the rest of the world and the Great Depression.
Context: The Exigency of the piece is the recession and the being professor, cuts to funding will most likely result in a lower salary or even being fired for this guy. The piece was published through Berkley College so most likely is biased towards higher education. The target audience is probably the academic community, then college students, then government officials.
Evaluation: This will probably turn out to be a very useful source as it is arguing many of the same things as I am. It may however be biased towards increasing spending simply because it is from a higher education institution and by a higher education employee. Facts and statement will likely have to be cross referenced for context however it does provide some interesting statistics that will help build my argument nicely.
Title of Artifact: “Higher Education Funding Cut by $89 Billion Over 10 Years in Obama Budget”
Summary: This article was written by a Bloomberg writer, John Lauerman, in February of 2011. The article talks about what President Obama’s proposed ten year plan means for higher education. It states that over the next ten years Obama’s plan will cut funding to higher education by $89 billion. It also talks about how they are planning to rearrange the way grants are given to students and how it will make it hard or impossible for some students to get two Pell grants in a year. It states this will most likely have the biggest impact with community colleges or vocational schools.
Context: The article was written for Bloomberg an economics magazine. The article was written at the time of the announcement. The audience was aimed towards those in the financial industry to update them on how the governments changing higher education will impact the market
Evaluation: This article will be useful in helping project the long term impact of Higher education. It also shows how affects of education can impact the world economically and how the government can actually improve the economy by increasing higher education funding.
Title of Artifact: State Funding for Higher Education in FY 2009 and FY 2010
Summary: This article was written by the National Conference of State Legislatures. It showed how federal funding has decreased since the start of the recession in 2007 and the subsequent compensatory tuition increases in schools across the states. This is quite interesting because it shows how the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act helped to fund school. This funding is running out this year as well. It also says specifically that Higher Education funding is something that most Officials view as discretionary funding.
Context: This was published by a National Conference for State legislatures and in light of the economic down turn was probably created to address the issue of higher education funding decreasing. There is no listed author which is a little fishy but the Nation Conference for State Legislatures is a legitimate agency.
Evaluation: The National Conference for State Legislatures is kind of a pandering group for state legislatures in Washington. The material it provides will be accurate, however likely to be very biased. The article argues in its way that the states aren’t to blame for the spending cuts but the federal government. Also it tries to say that Higher Education Spending can do fine on its own without State funding. It show a slight elitist attitude of officials towards those of low income trying to go to college which I will exploit in my argument.
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