Critics blast chancellor for comments in address

Conservatives on Friday lashed out at higher education system Chancellor Jim Rogers over comments he made during his State of the System address.

"Jim Rogers owes every caring parent in the state a public apology," Assemblyman Ed Goedhart, R-Amargosa Valley, and Sue Lowden, chairman of the Nevada Republican Party, said in a joint written statement.

Rogers, the outspoken chancellor who has been battling with Gov. Jim Gibbons over sharp proposed cuts to higher education, took aim at an apathetic public in Thursday's address.

"Your only relationship with the education system is to ship your unprepared kids to school, not with the expectation of success, but with the demand that an education system, inadequately funded, develop and/or repair children that you as a parent did not prepare for school or support while your children attended school," Rogers said, according to a transcript of the address.

Gibbons has outlined a budget that cuts higher education by 36 percent, but at individual schools, such as the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, the cuts could be as much as 52 percent.

"For Chancellor Rogers to blame the failures of the government-run education system on parents is nothing short of outrageous," the statement by Goedhart and Lowden read.

Andy Matthews, vice president of communications for the conservative think-tank Nevada Policy Research Institute, said in a statement that legislative spending on higher education has jumped 60 percent between fiscal year 2002 and fiscal year 2007.

"Chancellor Rogers tonight provided an outstanding example of what happens when Nevada's public officials choose to engage in finger-pointing at the expense of taking responsibility or offering innovative solutions to our fiscal challenges," the statement read.

Rogers in his address said that parents might have to face tax increases and sacrifice so that their children can go to college.

"You have to take part in your child's education," Rogers said. "Your responsibility does not stop as they walk out the door to catch the bus."

State Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-Las Vegas, said in a statement that some sacrifices, including cuts to education, might be necessary, but Gibbons' proposed 36 percent cut to higher education is "too much."

Contact Lawrence Mower at lmower @reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0440.