Colorado has some of the lowest state funding for higher education in the United States. This has led the University of Colorado (CU) to act more as a business, privatizing public education to the detriment of workers and students. CU now relies more on tuition and fee revenue from students (who are seen as "customers" or "consumers" of education), uses private financing for projects that ought to be state-funded, and is more concerned with the university's investment portfolio and credit rating than providing a quality education and decent workplace. The COVID-19 pandemic has magnified those trends and shown that CU now prioritizes this business model over the public good.

CU is a public institution and this model does not reflect the mission of public higher education in the US and Colorado. There are other, better choices that CU leadership can make; choices that prioritize good jobs and affordable education that are equitable and accessible to all Colorado communities.

CU needs to immediately adopt fair budget priorities that place workers and students at the center of public education. This requires public funding. CU must use all of its political weight to fight for radical increases in public funding from the state, which will require changes to Colorado law.

CU needs to prioritize:
- Living wages for all. (Increased wages for environmental, facilities, and dining service workers without layoffs or furloughs; hazard pay for Resident Advisors, who have been working in person at great personal risk for the whole COVID crisis;
ending graduate worker fees and implementing tuition waivers for graduate employees.)
- More egalitarian distribution of salaries. (The current ratio between top 10% of earners and lowest 10% is 15:1.)
- Increased funding anti-racism initiatives. (For example: mental health services for BIPOC students/staff/faculty; BIPOC scholarships; Chancellor’s postdoc; Increased funding for specialized research and teaching centers.)
- Benefit improvements. (Including: healthcare for lecturers/adjuncts and graduate workers; improving healthcare benefits for dependents; childcare benefit improvements.)
- Reversing trends towards ever-greater contingency and precariousness in the academic workforce. (Including: increasing the ratio of full-time positions with benefits to part-time positions without benefits; ceasing efforts to replace TT faculty with instructor positions; returning to a 3/3 instructor full-time load as recommended by the College of Arts and Sciences Committee at CU Boulder.)

That sounds expensive! How do we pay for it?
- Reevaluating the CUPD budget
- Reducing salaries of top executive earners, e.g. CU President, some athletic coaches
- No new capital construction (exempting deferred maintenance) until salaries and jobs lost in 2019-2020 are restored and all employees are earning a living wage
- Re-evaluating CU’s debt financing model and use of investment portfolio
- Increasing public funding