Today, Yale University’s 316th commencement is taking place. Beaming young people and their proud parents have flocked to the immaculate New Haven campus, eager to start their climb further up the ladder of American success. They know, as they surely knew the day they arrived, that their passage through such an august institution prepares them for a life of financial security and high social standing. They know, in other words, that as much as any young people, they are positioned to advance to the rarefied world of elite America.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Connecticut, twelve community colleges and four public universities — including one found in the very same city — are starved to death by austerity and neoliberalism, as the Democratic governor and a Democratic state legislature in a rich blue state enact brutal cuts to education, social services, and mental health care, while fighting to cut taxes on corporations. The cuts to the Connecticut State University system are particularly devastating. They risk killing majors, shuttering departments, and destroying tenure. Programs that help shepherd a student body that comes disproportionately from non-traditional backgrounds, and thus needs help the most, are under threat. Classes may be cut from course schedules, making it even harder for working students and students who are parents to fit school into their schedules. In every way, a university system that already struggles to serve its students and its state thanks to resource constraints will be hurt even more.

These cuts are personal, for me, as I am a graduate of Central Connecticut State University in the CSU system. I will risk self-aggrandizement in saying that I am an example of the kind of success story that is routinely produced by the CSU system and systems like it. In my early twenties I was lost — orphaned, broke, alcoholic, struggling from then-undiagnosed mental illness, and completely without direction or a sense of purpose. But I took classes at the local community college for a year, then transferred to Central, where I met warm, engaging, committed educators who shepherded me through my education and showed me that I had skills and knowledge that had value — that my life had value. Today, I have a PhD, live in New York City, work at a wonderful public college myself, and have been published by some of the most prominent newspapers and magazines in the world. I owe all of that, without exception, to my time in the CSU system. It was there that I put my life back together, thanks to the dedication of the professionals who worked there and the relatively low tuition costs that enabled me to attend. I say with no exaggeration: the Connecticut State University system saved my life. And now, for shortfalls of less than $100 million a year, that system risks being permanently crippled.