State universities under threat for . . . well, . . . doing what they do well

Rutgers University--my erstwhile employer for 29 years--is a major engine of education-based social mobility. A whopping 37% of our students have been "first generation" participants in tertiary education. Rutgers serves the people of New Jersey by providing stable, high-quality access to education. As a result, students improve the quality of their lives, lengthen their life expectancy, become greater net contributors to society. Rutgers expressly seeks out, and trains, "new" talent--kids that do not come from already educated-professional or high-bourgeois / ruling class families. It is a "Tier 1," full-service school--with majors and departments in just about every conceivable area of scholarship--and an "R1" research university, with serious achievements and excellent overall reputation. It is also a fully unionized workplace with serious bargaining. In that regard, it is a site of significant political education for its students and employees. It is by no means free of stress and unpleasantness--but even with that, the basic premise of the enterprise must be recognized as . . . well, . . . excellent.

Rutgers' business model is dependent on the federal government, to the tune of 58% of its revenues. Specifically, in 2024, Rutgers revenues from federal sources amounted to USD 560M (see the left side of the graph).

Pretty much exactly two-thirds of Rutgers' federal funds came from the US Department of Health and Human Services. An additional 12% came from the National Science Foundation, and another 4% from the Department of Defense (right side of the same graph). Tuition payments amount to 27% of Rutgers' total revenues. Altogether, USD 872.3M is "sponsored research" (not all that is from federal sources of course). Rutgers is a "state university" in it being an item of the State of New Jersey which appropriates just under one-fourth of Rutgers' revenues (see left side of this graph). (Of course the State of New Jersey itself, like all other states, is a recipient of federal funds for various projects. In 2022, such allocations amounted to over one-fifth of the budget of NJ. In the same year, the average federal transfer to the fifty states was slightly higher than NJ, 26.5%.)

Let me put it this way. Just looking at these basic facts, the threatened withholding of those funds by DOGE-bags threatens the immediate collapse of all similarly fed-dependent institutions in the US. The threat of the destruction of Rutgers and its peers amounts to the ruination of institutions that are (1) major contributors to publicly funded, for-public-(indeed: pan-human-)interest research, as science should be, (2) serious and generously laid out training facilities for people seeking expertise in high-quality research, and (3) sites of social mobility for tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of young people.

I can't get into the details of what I think will follow, once that happens here--but I assure you--nice it ain't gonna be.