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TAMARA MUMFORD '03 WAS BORN to a family of gifted musicians. Her talent was "the kind of talent you encounter only once in a lifetime," says her former voice teacher at Utah State. Mumford's parents encouraged her every step of the waybut could not afford the cost of her higher education. They had 11 other children to support. Gregg Simonds '76 '80MS was an adolescent when his father died. As the only "man" in the family, Simonds helped support his mother and sisters by working for local ranchers. His family situation and his undiagnosed learning disability made it difficult to concentrate on his high school class work. He wondered if he was college material. Judith Kerens' ('03MS) law enforcement career came to an abrupt end when four vertebrae in her back were crushed in a work-related car accident. "I became a gaunt ghost of my former self who lay in bed all day, watching TV and measuring every movement by the quantity of pain it might cause. At age 50, I thought my life was over." Where are these Utah State University graduates today? A year into her master's degree studies at Yale, Mumford was recruited into the young artist development program at the Metropolitan Opera. Simonds, emboldened by his success in his natural resource classes, became a nationally recognized consultant in sustainable ranching practices. Kerens, a top student in her vocational rehabilitation counseling program, has settled into a new career as a counselor and role model for clients with disabilities as debilitating as hers. For more than a century land grant universities like Utah State University have provided access and opportunity for people from all walks of life. Utah State and its peers have been the gateway to a better life. After two decades of declining public support for higher education, the social compact that ushered in an era of unparalleled educational attainment and prosperity appears to have dissolved. In the last four recessionary years alone, USU's reliance on state funding has shrunk at an accelerated rate - from 37 to 29 percent of its operating budgetIn comparison to the health care needs of Utah's indigent (one of many unfunded mandates from the federal government) and the public school and transportation demands of a rapidly growing population, higher education seems more like a luxury than a societal responsibility. As a result, says Utah State President Stan Albrecht, "The state decreasingly views higher education as a public good." more
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