Proposal redistributes lower university funds

A YSU official said the plan doesn't resolve the bigger issue of how the state funds higher education.
COLUMBUS (AP) -- State dollars for academics would be distributed more equitably among public colleges and universities under a proposal before the Ohio Board of Regents.
The schools reached a compromise to reallocate State Share of Instruction money after some were surprised in July when they realized they wouldn't get as much money as they had expected because of uneven enrollment growth across campuses.
Institutions with surging enrollments now would get smaller increases in funding, while those with stagnant or shrinking student numbers would still have funding cut but by not as much, under the proposal regents were expected to approve today.
"Some are getting less of an increase; some are getting less of a cut. It was a good compromise, but it's still hard to take," said Bill Decatur, vice president for finance and administration at the University of Toledo.
The university was slated to receive $2.3 million less than last year because its enrollment didn't increase. But the compromise now means that the school would see only a $1.2 million cut compared with last year.
"That's still significant," Decatur said, noting that the school now will have to let some positions go unfilled and defer some equipment purchases to offset the loss.
The state Controlling Board, a legislative panel that approves much state spending, still must approve the new funding plan after the regents, who oversee the state's public institutions, do so.
Terry Ondreyka, Youngstown State University's vice president for financial affairs, said the plan doesn't resolve the bigger issue of how the state funds higher education.
"The big issue is the privatization of public universities, and the ongoing public policy shift of placing more and more of the funding burden on students and less on the state," Ondreyka said.
A "hold harmless" provision in state law says that all schools will receive at least the same amount of instructional subsidies in the 2002-03 school year as they did in 2001-02.
However, $100 million less was available to be distributed among the schools this year because of a $121 million budget cut for higher education, which was part of a larger cut to the entire state budget.
The regents must use a complicated enrollment-driven funding formula to reallocate what money is left in the fund, and not all schools gained the same number of students.
This year, enrollments at the state's 13 four-year public universities and 23 community and technical colleges increased by 15,000 students, which affected the funding formula, said Rich Petrick, the regents' vice chancellor for finance.
In July, the formula had called for five four-year public universities where enrollments ballooned to get large increases and the other eight to get less.
That would remain the same, although the schools agreed that those with surging student populations would get only 67 percent of the increases they were slated to receive in July. The other 33 percent of that money would go to schools facing cuts.
Among the biggest losers is the University of Cincinnati, which in July faced a $3 million -- or 2 percent -- decline over last year's funding level. UC now would get a $2 million cut, or 1.2 percent less than last year.
"Another $2 million is not easy to take, but if we increase our enrollments next year like we plan to, this won't be a problem in the future," said Jim Plummer, the University of Cincinnati's interim vice president for finance. Plummer said all the colleges and universities agreed to the compromise.