Verdict unclear if tuition incentive grant will supplement CMU’s base funding
Ashley Chaplain said she has read through Gov. Rick Snyder’s 156-page budget proposal and she does not like the accounting gimmicks she sees.
About 40 students attended a University Budget Forum on Tuesday night to hear university administrators Kathy Wilbur and David Burdette discuss the politics behind the governor’s proposals and the impact on Central Michigan University’s budget.
“It seems like everything is coming off the backs of students,” said Chaplain, a Wixom senior, during the meeting in the Charles V. Park Library Auditorium.
Wilbur, vice president of Development and External Relations, said if CMU does not raise tuition by more than 7.1 percent to receive Snyder’s tuition incentive grant, it will shrink its proposed state cutback from 23.3 percent, or $61,431,100 in funding, to 15 percent, or $68,108,900.
“I would expect that we would be able to do that,” she said.
But Burdette, vice president of Finance and Administrative Services, said the state has not specified whether the $6,677,800 in incentive funds would funnel into CMU’s base or if the funds would be a one-time grant. If it was given as one-time funds, Burdette said CMU would not be able to count on it in 2012-13.
“Unless that becomes part of our base, that could be one-time money,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like this and it could be a challenge.”
Burdette said the university will have to decrease expenditures and raise the tuition rate to cover the $12 million loss in funding from the 2010-11 school year when CMU received $80,132,000.
“Tuition isn’t going to solve that problem,” he said. “Part of it, but not all of it.”
University President George Ross told the CM Life editorial board March 17 there is no possibility tuition will be increased by 7.1 percent or more, but a "moderate" increase is expected. Tuition was raised 2.06 percent last year and it went up 4.6 percent in 2009.
Because some faculty groups took a zero-percent wage increase, Burdette said there is $5.2 million in expense reductions available to replace part of the lost appropriations.
CMU received the biggest cuts in funding among Michigan’s public universities, Burdette said, because the budget office calculated the average tuition hike to be 8.3 percent. He said that figure was skewed because of the CMU Promise phasing out.
“We had the Promise so we have what we call different cohorts,” Burdette said. “If you fall off the Promise, you go from what is a pretty low rate to a higher rate.”
Because the tuition hike was calculated to be the highest among Michigan's public universities, CMU received the biggest cut, he said.
Wilbur said the tuition incentive grant and variations in funding based on tuition hikes weren’t the only new developments Snyder made. She said the governor also proposed passing the budget sooner — by June 1 instead of Oct. 1 — and he folded the higher education budget into the K-12 budget funded through the school aid fund.
Wilbur said the school aid fund is a fairly healthy budget, though it is already maxed out to fund K-12.
“In effect, (this arrangement) set up a very unhealthy conflict with K-12,” Wilbur said, adding K-12 does not want higher education funded through the school aid fund and the proposal has sparked a level of debate.
“It is not a safe haven,” she said. “We are not sure how this will play out.”
The switch to the June 1 deadline would be a positive change, WIlbur said.
“Whether (the budget) is good, bad or ugly — at least you know (what state appropriations will be),” she said.
Ross is scheduled to testify in Lansing on March 30 with administrators from Wayne State University and Western Michigan University.
