NJ Private Colleges Fight Back Against State Aid Cuts

New Jersey’s 13 private colleges are fighting back against a proposed $4 million cut to their state operating aid, and they’ve got a solid argument: they were already getting shorted before Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s budget pencil hit the page.

Sherrill’s $60.7 billion spending plan proposes $5.6 million in operating aid to the state’s independent colleges and universities. That’s down from $9.6 million in the current fiscal year. Not a trim. A gut punch.

Steve Reynolds, president of the Independent Colleges and Universities of New Jersey, put it plain. “We’re getting cut disproportionately with the publics, who we compete with,” he said. That comparison matters, because under New Jersey law, aid to private colleges is supposed to equal 25% of the direct per-student support that state colleges receive. The catch: only “so long as funds are available.” That escape hatch has been used constantly. Full funding would land somewhere between $25 million and $30 million per year, according to representatives from the independent schools. The most they ever saw in a single year since 2010 was $16.5 million, back in fiscal year 2024. Every year since, that number has dropped.

The $5.6 million figure Sherrill is proposing would be the lowest since 2021, a post-pandemic low. Cold comfort: it still beats the three years during the 2010s when these schools received zero.

David Rousseau, the organization’s vice president, said consistency with public institutions is the core issue, not just the dollar amount. “We educate 63,000 students, employ 20,000 people. Our faculty and the people who go to these schools are taxpayers of New Jersey,” he told reporters. Sherrill’s budget keeps operating aid flat for four-year public universities and county colleges, which makes the cuts to independent schools stand out even more sharply.

Worth knowing: the budget zeroes out several supplemental line items that previously sent additional dollars to the independent schools. Those aren’t small rounding errors. They represent real money that smaller private colleges count on to stay competitive on tuition and financial aid against heavily subsidized public institutions.

Sherrill, a Democrat who took office in January, has framed her budget around closing the state’s structural deficit without broad-based tax increases. She’s cutting across most sections of state government. But the independent colleges argue they shouldn’t bear a disproportionate share of that pain when public universities face no comparable reduction to their base aid.

The political math here is tricky. Private colleges don’t carry the same organized lobbying weight as, say, Rutgers or the county college system, which has deep roots in every legislative district. But 63,000 students and 20,000 employees spread across 13 campuses is not nothing. Those people vote. Their parents vote.

Full reporting on the budget negotiations, including the governor’s office response, comes from NJ Monitor, which has been tracking the higher ed cuts closely.

The legislature still has to pass a budget. That means hearings, lobbying, and plenty of room for line items to move. Independent college advocates are clearly not planning to accept this number quietly. Whether they can peel off enough votes in Trenton to restore some of that $4 million is the question. Spring budget season in New Jersey. Never dull.