The news has come down from the Statehouse in Des Moines. Higher education has been saved.

Please hold your applause.

The Legislature decided Monday to give about $11 million more in state appropriations to higher education than it first allotted. That will work out to be about $3 million more to Iowa State than legislators were originally going to give us.

The budget’s a lot better than it could have been, but it’s still a lot less than it should be.

For fiscal year 2001, Iowa State asked the Legislature for about $263 million. The House recommended allotting Iowa State about $253.5 million. We’ll end up with $256,480,159.

The Iowa Legislature obviously has many interests and departments to fund each year, and the challenges it faces in allocating all of the money in its budget are considerable.

But one would think that Iowa, which considers itself such a great education state, would try a little bit harder to provide for its touted treasure. Instead, the legislators are forcing an almost certain tuition increase, and they’re slowly forcing students away from the state universities.

State universities are central to Iowa’s education system. We prize our universities. We make it more expensive for students from out of state to come here, we encourage all of our own kids to stay here, and we bemoan the fact that so many Iowans leave for out-of-state colleges.

State universities are where breakthroughs in technology are made, where remedies to the state’s problems are developed and where the vast majority of those in Iowa’s workforce are trained.

So we’re going to give the universities less money to work with?

It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

In fairness to the legislators, the compromised appropriation for 2001 is still an increase over this year’s allocation. But it’s not much more — hardly enough to pay for improvements or advancements along with inflationary costs.

Legislators can say that it’s time for universities to tighten their belts and deal with less money. But universities won’t cut out programs or departments. They’ll raise tuition.

And if tuition is raised, students are going to see serious problems. Not as many Iowa kids will be able to go to the universities, and they’ll turn more and more to community colleges and technical schools, where they can get a much cheaper education.

There’s nothing wrong with those schools, but a major shift to them will kill the universities.

Is that what we want in this education state?

Iowa State Daily Editorial Board: Sara Ziegler, Greg Jerrett, Kate Kompas, Carrie Tett and David Roepke.