Learning Ecosystems

WASHINGTON — With state revenues stagnating and unemployment stuck at high levels in most states, the budget outlook for public higher education in the 2011 fiscal year remains rather bleak. But college leaders in most states are poised to get a gift from the nation’s capital this week, in the form, oddly enough, of $16 billion in Medicaid funds.

The money was part of legislation — which was approved by the Senate Thursday, and which Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has called her colleagues back to town to consider next week — that would also provide $10 billion to states to save “education jobs.” While logic might suggest that that would be the portion of the measure with implications for higher education, it really isn’t; that money is set aside to help ward off the elimination of as many as 138,000 elementary and secondary school teaching positions.