Broadcast television station KRQE, the Kasa Fox affiliate in Albuquerque, aired what was presented as a news story on April 5 about New Mexico’s colleges and universities and their funding formulas. It gave the erroneous impression that higher education in New Mexico is not only too expensive for the state to sustain at current levels (according to Governor Martinez’s newly appointed Secretary of Higher Education Dr. Jose Garcia) but is also “a habit the state may no longer be able to afford” according to reporter Dean Staley.
In a “tease” promoting the story prior to the broadcast, the KRQE anchor went so far as to say that colleges in New Mexico “are multiplying faster than oversexed rabbits,” and at the end of the story the anchor commented, “I guess you don’t have to go away to college anymore; you just walk down the street.”
We take exception to this, along with statements by state Senator John Arthur Smith that UNM-Taos has three branch campuses in Taos (it has one) and that college presidents use expansion to unfairly increase their funding from the state. To date none of the responsible parties have either retracted or corrected the misrepresentations in this slanted piece. Therefore we are presenting it here for you to form your own impression. Please direct your comments to my email: billk@unm.edu and let me know if I may have your permission to forward them on to the appropriate parties.
Higher education is a serious matter, particularly in small, rural communities where a community college is often the only option for people needing to improve their skills to become more competitive in the workforce or take courses for personal enrichment. At UNM-Taos, for example, we have had an extraordinary increase in enrollment in the past few years---22 percent, for a total of well over 1,600 students---at the same time that our budget has been cut by 21 percent. In addition, because of that rapid growth, we have one of the smallest square-footage-to-student ratios in the entire state.
One wonders how anyone can, in good faith, construe statistics like that as being extravagant.
Furthermore, a high percentage of our students have one or more jobs, support extended families and still somehow make time to purse a certificate or degree. These are the people who will build a stronger future for New Mexico, and they deserve our profound respect, not criticism or mockery from media.
Bill Knief
UNM-Taos Public Relations
