State colleges will need time to react to budget - Gina Macris, Providence Journal

Rhode Island, which ranks last among the 50 states in its support of higher education, provides about 15 percent of the revenue needed to run the three public colleges. Rhode Island’s public college system faces a year of uphill uncertainty, even though it stands to get a net increase of $4 million in state support from the state budget. Viewed another way, the budget that cleared the House early Saturday guts $6 million of a $10-million hike that had been proposed by Governor Chafee to help reverse a $38-million decrease in the state’s annual allocation for higher education since 2007. Ray M. Di Pasquale, Commissioner of Higher Education, set that scene in briefing the Board of Governors for Higher Education Monday about the course of budget deliberations, which shift to the Senate Tuesday. He said the three state colleges will need time to figure out what the General Assembly’s budget means in practical terms.