The State Senate is considering a budget that would increase funding for elementary and secondary schools and hold higher education funding steady.
Senator Dan Brown of the Senate Appropriations Committee says higher education in Missouri has suffered tremendously in the last three years. Brown says higher education funding has rolled back to the level it was at fifteen years ago.
Governor Jay Nixon has suggested cutting funding to higher education to help balance the budget. But Brown says that’s unnecessary because there is money in the state’s general revenue fund. “We are trying to put dollars back in the higher ed budget, you know we think we have identified quite a number of dollars we can use,” Brown said.
The committee has also proposed cuts to certain social programs that have grown in recent years.
