AP
To Honor and Serve, right, with jockey Jose Lezcano, crosses the finish line in front of Ruler on Ice, with jockey Garrett Gomez, to win during the Pennsylvania Derby horse race at Parx Racing on Saturday, Sept. 24, 2011, in Bensalem, Pa.
Education advocates are demanding Pennsylvania lawmakers make a choice: students or horses.
They want the state to cut subsidies to the horse-racing industry that top $230 million annually and redirect the funds to students and the State System of Higher Education. Pennsylvania’s Racehorse Development Fund, the most generous in the nation after New York, traces back to 1967 but was vastly expanded in 2004.
Without federal stimulus money, states would have cut tax appropriations for higher education by 2.3 percent. But how states are spending the billions in stimulus varies.
Despite the years of increases, state and local funding for public higher education has not fully recovered from cuts made during the 2008 recession, an annual State Higher Education Finance report shows. Experts worry what will come in the future after 2020 turned out better than expected.