Students at Arizona State University will be viewing their spring class schedules two weeks later than usual this year. The delay is no technical glitch but an emergency time-out so the administration can find the money to keep operating after the state legislature slashed its funding by a whopping $50 million. By the time spring comes, students could find that classes are bigger, more courses are online, and familiar faculty faces are gone. “We have to look at everything, what we can afford to do and how well we can do it,” said Elizabeth Capaldi, the university’s provost.

Arizona is not alone in its predicament. As the economy sputters, at least 39 states face budget shortfalls this year, and 21 states have cut funding to their public universities, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The City University of New York is losing $51 million, schools in western North Carolina are looking at a $48 million cut, the damage in Florida is $150 million, in Maryland, $30 million, and so on. In response, college administrations are putting everything on the table: tuition hikes, enrollment freezes, and staff cuts. But with universities constantly at the mercy of state budgets, they are also searching for a long-term plan.

Their present woes come on the heels of decades of unpredictability. During the economic doldrums of 1991 and 1992, total state tax appropriation for higher education nation-wide dropped 0.2 percent and 0.9 percent, according to Illinois State University’s Grapevine report, which compiles annual data on higher education. It fell by 2.1 percent in 2004, a year of strong growth, then rose 7.1 percent last year when the economy was still partying on the housing bubble. But the long-term trend has been in the direction of steadily reduced funding, even as the consensus among economists, politicians, and corporate executives has been that the solution to the country’s current economic woes and future growth hinges on a well-educated workforce. In an open letter to the presidential candidates by the State Higher Education Executive Officers (“SHEEO”), the national association warned that by 2025, the U.S. will fall 16 million associate or bachelors degrees short of the level needed to match other industrialized countries like Japan and Canada. It noted that only 40 percent of young adults in the U.S. have an associate degree or higher, compared with the 55 percent in these other countries. In fact, the U.S. has the worst degree-completion rate among developed nations, especially for low-income students and minorities.

Until now, university administrators have had little leeway in addressing their budget deficits, but one consistent option has been increasing tuition. At Cuny, for instance, tuition and fees rose 94 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars from 1989 to 2006, as the state’s contribution to its budget fell by 35 percent and New York City’s by 24 percent, according to figures from the New York City Independent Budget Office. Tuition makes up about 34 percent of Cuny’s 2008-2009 budget, a sharp rise from the 21 percent in 1991. Many, like Donald Landenberg, professor and chancellor emeritus of the University of Maryland, have described the phenomenon as the “slow and steady privatization” of universities — higher education as a privilege of those who can afford it.

But, if the role of public universities is to provide affordable education to a wide swath of the citizenry — to reverse that educational shortfall — it becomes difficult for them to raise fees too much, too quickly. “Raising tuition fees is a solution in terms of providing forward momentum for the universities but we should get rid of the notion that this should be the only solution,” said Landenberg. “It is unacceptable in any rational, reasonable society that education is solely a private benefit, as it is as much a public one.” Until now, public colleges and universities across the country have been the only meaningfully affordable institutions of higher education. Consider Cuny, founded in 1848 as a free academy for the children of immigrant and working class New Yorkers. Today, it is the largest urban university system in the country with over 400,000 students. Its 2008 tuition of $4,000 is 12 times less than the $50,000 fee forked out over at private New York University.

Not all institutions have fallen back on higher tuition to fund budget shortfalls. Some schools have decided to bring an axe to their own spending. In Maryland, for instance, state universities fed up with being squeezed once again by state funding cuts and rising costs launched a cost-saving plan four years ago. In the first year, the university saved $25 million and has since chalked up $94 million in savings at its 11 campuses through moves like increasing faculty course loads and maximizing the use of facilities. The University of California Berkeley, hit hard by an immediate $33 million budget cut from the state, is now pressing ahead to cut costs through measures like saving energy and utility costs and reducing reliance on leased space.

But these are short-term savings. If the U.S. is going to remain competitive in a global economy by fielding an educated workforce, the only long-term solution is for state legislatures to make higher education a consistent and predictable priority in their budgets. But it will be much easier for university administrators to convince legislatures to spend more money if they spend that money more wisely. Universities will have to streamline their bureaucracies and develop more efficient administrative programs, says Hunter Rawlings, chairman of the New York State Commission on Higher Education and president emeritus at Cornell University, a process that could take up to 20 years. “You don’t make progress on these issues by complaining and pleading,” said Paul Lingenfelter, SHEEO’s president. “You do it by providing irresistible options and compelling benefits to state decision makers to increase their funding support. If they are going to give up some other thing for this, show them it is for value.”

Certainly, figuring out how to get sustainable stable funding is still a work in progress for public universities but if anything, the present financial crisis should jump-start the process of change. “I think it is on track but the track is currently very bumpy,” said Landenberg. “But then again, it has all along been bumpy, never a smooth highway. It is something we just need to keep working on.”

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