Tier II tuition dollars give department budgets boost

USU has committed to raise academic departments’ operating budgets by 78 percent over the next five years.

The increase is due to a commitment by President Stan Albrecht to increase the amount each department has per faculty member and will begin this year.

As of the last fiscal year, only about one fourth of USU’s academic departments had operating budgets of $2,900 per faculty member or more. By the end of the five-year commitment, all departments will have operating budgets at least at that level.

USU Provost Ray Coward said the increase is a “major step forward,” as the university’s operating budgets haven’t had any increases in several years.

The average department operating budget hasn’t increased in 15 years or more, instead remaining static. Steve Scheiner, head of the chemistry department, said this amounts to a 4 to 5 percent budget cut when inflation is taken into account.

“The budgets are so low at this school, so minor,” said Richard Jensen, accountancy department head. “You have to supplement it through other means, and that’s not easy to do.”

Some departments have depended on drawing big research projects in order to keep themselves afloat. Others counted on donations or cut positions for adjunct professors.

The College of Business has introduced a differential tuition increase that went to supporting the department operating budgets as well as the college’s upper administration’s operating costs. Jay Greene, budget officer for the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, said the college has been relying mostly on donations to keep up its operations.

Coward said the money for the increase is coming from Tier II tuition, which is tuition added by the university after Tier I tuition, which is set by the state.

“The president and I visited with faculty in all 43 academic units and heard this time and time again, that their ability to provide educational opportunities has been constricted by their budgets,” Coward said.

The provost said upper administration has been working for the past six months to fund the increase.

“(The president) said, ‘Do it,’ so we found a way to do it,” he said.

In the name of increasing competitiveness

However, even after the increase many departments will be hurting for funds. Scheiner said the chemistry department’s budget will still be quite a bit lower than a comparable department’s budget at another university. Coward said he did not know for sure whether the budgets will be comparable to other universities’, due to lack of benchmark data.

In fact, for some departments, some of the budget increase will be going to providing health insurance for graduate students. In the chemistry department, for example, a great deal of the increase will be directed to student health care premiums. Scheiner said that cost comes to roughly $1000 per student per year.

“It’s definitely a plus, but it won’t be increasing our operating budget,” he said. “You take what you can get.”

Jeffrey Smitten, head of the English department, said the health insurance premiums should only affect the first year’s increase. Each department will receive a different amount of money based on need and current budget, and Coward said this could affect how each decides to allocate the money they receive.

“A poor department like ours always stands to gain,” Smitten said jokingly.

“Anything I get I just consider so generous,” Jensen said.

Jensen said the increased budget will allow the College of Business to release students from paying some course fees.

“I think they’ve been higher than they should be,” he said, “but the departments had nothing to operate on.”

The money for the health insurance premiums is coming from a reallocation of the university’s overall budget. Coward said it was a matter of saving a bit here and there, squeezing blood from this stone and that, gathering the funds from different sources.

Though student health insurance may be taking a chunk out of the budget increases, Smitten said it’s a benefit offered by all but two schools in the Intermountain West, including USU, and will be helpful for recruiting graduate students.

Greene said he hoped the increase can be used to catch up financially and that it won’t be totally used up by things like student health insurance, but that providing the insurance is a definite plus.

“That is a great thing,” he said. “Our main purpose here is the students. I wish we could do the same thing for the undergrads.”

Coward said in a big organization like USU, it’s important that budget decisions be made at the department level, and that the Tier II money being fed into the department budgets may be used for health insurance if that’s what a particular department needs to do.

“What we have to avoid is what happened for the past 15 years,” he said. “We weren’t ignoring the problem, but we didn’t make it our priority. This is a constant challenge for us.”

Coward said the university has opened discussion with the Legislature about how to keep up with inflation and avoid another 15-year drought.

Better resources, better opportunities

Other changes outlined in the letter were university commitments over the next five years of $4 million to invest in the electronic journal collection at the Merrill-Cazier Library, and $750,000 to enhance USU’s international education programs.

According to the provost’s letter, the additional funding for journals came in response to faculty members’ concerns that there were not enough resources in the library. With this funding, the library will be able to purchase a new collection of journals, called the Freedom Collection, as well as keep current subscriptions to journals it already has. Of the journals in the Freedom Collection, 1,700 are titles previously unavailable to USU faculty and students.

Betty Rozum, associate director for technical service at the library, said the price of journals has inflated by 8 to 10 percent over the past 15 years, but the library’s budget has not kept up with the increasing cost. As a result, Rozum said the library had to gradually cancel subscriptions.

“Over the years the collection of journals has eroded and it’s frustrating to the faculty,” she said. “Many of them come from Stanford or other places and had every resource they needed, and and then they came here and our budget prevented us from providing that.

“We’re just so happy because the president and the provost have really gone to bat to get faculty and students what they need.”

Coward said funding journal subscriptions is a problem nation-wide. The money for the journals will come in several installations that will increase yearly. Coward said though the university has the money for this year’s installation, they are working on securing next year’s payment.

“Four million is not thumb change,” he said. “We know there it’s coming from the first year. We don’t know the second or third year yet.”

The new titles in the journals collection are available for use now, with a few still on their way. Rozum said the collection purchased by the school is one of the best available, especially for science and technology.

The money for the international education programs will be alloted for three purposes: increasing opportunities for USU students to study abroad, bringing more international students to USU, and increasing support to offices that provide the infrastructure for international education.

–elizabeth.lawyer@aggiemail.usu.edu