The spring graduation ceremonies at Ohio’s public universities are over. But the urgent question they bring to mind remains: What will rebuild our state’s battered economy more durably, and help its citizens more — further tax cuts, or restored public investment in a better-educated work force?

For the past decade, this state’s leaders of both parties have bet on tax cuts. They, and we, have lost that bet.

Ohio remains well below the national average in job growth, both overall and in the private sector, while income inequality and the unfairness of the state’s tax structure have increased. It’s time for a better approach.

A new report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington, spells out the damage that cuts in state aid have done to public higher education in recent years. It’s depressing reading, unless its conclusions inspire Statehouse politicians to change course as they finish work on the new state budget over the next five weeks. Don’t bet the tuition check on that prospect.

From 2008 through this year, according to the report, state funding of higher education in Ohio has fallen nearly 23 percent below what it was before the Great Recession. That amounts to a cut of $1,570 per student, adjusted for inflation. That reduction places Ohio in the top half of aid-chopping states.

The trend has reversed — slightly — as Ohio’s economy has slowly recovered. State higher-education support per student has risen by about 1 percent this year over last year, or $57 a head. But the state is still a long way from making up for the previous years of massive cuts, even as enrollment at some public universities has grown.

Michael Mitchell, the chief author of the center’s report, says that instead of cutting taxes and investment, Ohio and other states should focus on broadening access to affordable, top-quality higher education. That will give our students the advanced job skills tomorrow’s global economy will demand, he says. A highly educated work force, he adds, is more important that ever to promote economic growth and job creation.

“Tax cuts make it very difficult to put dollars back into higher education,” Mr. Mitchell told me last week. “If you look at the research, there’s no guarantee that tax cuts provide economic growth to the state, while decreased investments in education are a drag on the economy.”

Slow tuition growth, but ...

One positive measure: Between 2008 and this year, average tuition at Ohio’s four-year public universities has risen by just 4.5 percent — $435 per student — the report says. That’s a smaller boost than in any state other than Montana and Maryland. Such thrift is largely the product of ceilings on tuition increases imposed here by the General Assembly and governor’s office.

In fact, average tuition at the four-year schools is lower this year — by 0.1 percent, or about six bucks — than it was last year. But this apparent good news is not unalloyed.

Despite the restraint of the past few years, tuition and fees at Ohio’s public universities are still the 16th highest in the nation, the liberal advocacy group Policy Matters Ohio notes. At two-year schools, which budget-challenged students must often rely on, costs are 12th highest.

Even though federal financial aid grants and tax credits for higher education have increased, affordability remains a big challenge for Ohio students, especially as the incomes of many families across the state have stagnated or fallen. So does the threat of oppressive loan debt, which makes students less likely to get their degrees, to pursue graduate study, and ultimately to buy houses and start businesses.

At the same time, if state aid is way down and universities are constrained in what they can charge, then the schools have to cut spending in ways that often can diminish both the quality of the education they offer and students’ access to it. That means fewer faculty and courses, greater reliance on low-paid adjunct faculty, larger classes, and reduced services at the library and the computer lab.

Such things are happening in Ohio. Of course, state universities also need to reduce their bloated administrative costs, but that alone won’t get the job done.

The recession required Ohio to slash its budget to stay solvent. But state government relied too heavily on cuts alone, rather than a more-balanced menu of spending and revenue options. And now that the recession is over, more or less, Statehouse politicians continue to place tax cuts ahead of restored aid to higher education and lots of other essential public services.

More of the same

The new two-year state budget that takes effect July 1 likely won’t do much more than maintain the status quo in higher education funding. That’s not good enough.

Gov. John Kasich and state lawmakers say they want to reward schools whose students not merely enroll, but also graduate. That’s appropriate.

Yet increases in state aid in any of the proposed budget plans is meager — about 2.5 percent a year. Statehouse denizens remain a lot more intent on telling college and university leaders what to do than on meeting their own responsibilities to the institutions and students.

The governor’s budget would allow public universities and colleges to raise tuition by 2 percent in the first year of the new budget, and freeze tuition in the second year. The budget approved by the House would allow a bit more flexibility. The Senate is still working on its plan, but Senate leaders are challenging public colleges and universities to cut tuition by 5 percent in return for more state aid.

During the recession, state government also eliminated funding for need-based aid to students at Ohio’s two-year community colleges and branch campuses, known as Ohio College Opportunity Grants. Budget proposals would restore this funding only partially, at best.

“Ohio is still a high-tuition state,” Mr. Mitchell says. “[Tuition restraint] is small consolation to students if you’re cutting aid grants for a lot of them.”

Terry Thomas, a public policy consultant to the Center for Community Solutions, offered this observation in a recent analysis of state budget proposals: “Rarely, it seems, has higher education been so low on the radar of Ohio public policy makers as has been the case in recent times.” That’s a problem.

The jobs of the future, in Ohio and elsewhere, will require many more college-educated workers. The payoff is considerable; the typical young college graduate makes $12,000 a year more than someone who didn’t go to college. When more people have college degrees, their communities also benefit: with stronger employers who pay better wages, less crime, better public health, and enhanced civic engagement.

That’s how Ohio will grow its economy. Adequate investment by the state in affordable, good-quality higher education, as well as financial aid to middle-class and low-income students who need and have earned it, will enable all of us to compete better.

More expensive, ineffective, shortsighted tax cuts won’t promote economic growth; they’ll obstruct it. All they will do is make Ohio’s rich richer. We — and the state officials we elect to represent us — can, and have to, do better.

David Kushma is editor of The Blade.

Contact him at: dkushma@theblade.com or on Twitter @dkushma1

First Published May 24, 2015, 4:00 a.m.