During his State of the State address on Jan. 19, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder called for a shift away from an emphasis on K-12 education in Michigan. Instead, he said, we should focus on P-20 education: starting students strong in preschool and keeping them enrolled in strong state programs during their undergraduate and post-baccalaureate studies.

But a mere month after his well-received proclaimation, Snyder slashed higher education funding by 22 percent in his budget proposal.

Times are tough. Michigan’s economic woes have given the state one of the worst economies in nation, and the longer its recession drags on, the more obvious impacts on the state become. Money for the state has to come from somewhere, but there’s a right way and a wrong way to trim the fat from a budget, and cutting funding to colleges and universities by nearly a quarter after declaring that higher education should be a priority – that’s the wrong way.

The financial landscape looks bleak for students today. House Republicans want to cut Pell Grants and other student aid by millions of dollars, the Michigan legislature wants to revoke students’ Bridge Card eligibility and Snyder wants to cut higher education funding for supposedly more important projects. These legislators view higher education as a luxury expense, but for those who don’t want to spend their lives flipping burgers at a fast-food restaurant, a college degree is anything but a luxury.

Cutting spending on college students may save the government money in the short term, but the long-term effects could financially cripple our generation. According to the Project on Student Debt, college seniors who graduated in 2009 carried an average of $24,000 in student loan debt from their undergraduate degrees, up 6 percent from the previous year. The Project on Student Debt also estimates that the amount of debt incurred by college students is up by more than 50 percent from the mid-1990s. Sending twentysomethings into the real world laden with debt doesn’t encourage financial growth – it creates a generation of spenders and innovators who are hindered by massive student loan debts, discouraging them from seeking graduate degrees, undertaking entrepreneurial efforts or reinvesting money into the nation’s struggling economy.

Grand Valley State University President Thomas J. Haas made himself look like a superhero among GVSU students when he sent out his e-mail declaring that he “will not allow reductions in state aid to compromise our academic quality nor our services to students,” and when he goes before the Michigan legislature on March 2, we can only hope he can talk sense into our new governor and convince him to reconsider his proposal.