Too often recently RIC has been ignored when the state budget is developed.  URI has benefitted from its status as the state’s largest public research university, and most recently CCRI was given a massive boost with RI Promise, which directed many students who might otherwise have benefitted from a four-year RIC education to attend CCRI.  This means that RIC’s budget has suffered, and departments have found themselves making the best of a very bad financial situation.

 

Our students, our state deserve better.

• Our students are almost all from Rhode Island.  Unlike most colleges in Rhode Island, the vast majority (more than 70 percent) of our students will stay in Rhode Island to contribute positively to our state.  If the General Assembly and the Governor want to make a difference with tax dollars, they should support Rhode Island’s College.

• Our students are majority first-generation college students, and we are intensely proud of them.  Their education will make a real difference for their future and the future of their families and the state.  Our alumni serve as the core of Rhode Island’s professional workforce.

• Rhode Island trails in the amount of state support it offers to public higher education.  In 2017, even after gains under Governor Raimondo’s administration, it still ranked 39th for its support for higher education, and state support is still 13 percent less than it had been prior to the recession.  Tuition is therefore up 44 percent at its four-year public institutions.    (AFT National Report: Public Education Funding in the Aftermath of the Great Recession)

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Our students deserve to graduate with a college degree without mounds of debt, and our state deserves a diverse citizenry which can afford to live, work and build a vibrant economy and culture in Rhode Island.

• We campaign to restore and increase state higher education funding for Rhode Island College, and to extend Rhode Island Promise to RIC students, current and future.

• The cost of a RIC education has quadrupled over a single generation.

• Our students work long hours and multiple jobs to make ends meet for their families and pay for a bachelor’s degree, which can be a gateway to well-paid professional careers in the fields our state needs moving forward. 

• But crushing student debt hampers their future, and will constrain our state’s economic future.

• We believe that supporting the junior and senior years of Rhode Island students makes a lot of sense.  Enrollment drops off after the first two years as families run out of money, and students will have already demonstrated their abilities to succeed by staying on track in their first two years.

• Rhode Island College educates the state’s professionals, including many of her teachers, nurses and social workers, as well as government leaders including Representative James Langevin and Cranston Mayor and recent GOP Gubernatorial candidate Alan Fung.

 

Please join us, and call upon the Post-Secondary Council, the General Assembly and the Governor to RESPECT RIC, her students, faculty and staff.  We do!

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