Most everyone who's involved agrees that it would be nice to have a formula to guide funding for higher education each year, to avoid the push and pull of competing requests for a finite amount of money when the Legislature gets down to the debate.
The devil, however, is in the details. How to give relative weight to growth in the higher education system, demands for support services, the costs of buildings and infrastructure, and the student contribution via tuition bogs down the conversation about formula funding and stymies solutions.
After two days of discussion, the Legislature's Appropriations Subcommittee for Higher Education adjourned no closer to a comprehensive formula than when they began. A planned third day of considerations was cancelled so members of the subcommittee could attend a Capitol memorial service for Sen. Pete Suazo, who was killed in an ATV accident in Sanpete County.
"By Friday, I want a thorough understanding of formula funding," said Sen. Lyle Hillyard, R-Logan, as the subcommittee began its discussions Wednesday morning on the Utah State University campus. "If in three days we have no concrete proposals, we will have wasted our time." At the end of an extended day Thursday at the University of Utah, with hours of sifting through the complex issues, there was, in fact, no concrete proposal — only an agreement to meet with members of the State Board of Regents, who have had a proposal on funding on the table for more than a year.
"Let's sit down, talk about it, compare our versions and compromise," said regents vice chairwoman Pamela Atkinson, who was in the audience during the discussion. The regents' proposal would create a base budget based on the number of existing students, add a factor for new students and then increase the budget by another set percentage to take care of the added costs related to educating college students and providing public services, research and other functions that are part of the higher education role.
Legislators are leery of putting such a formula into law, given budget constraints and especially the prospects of declining tax revenues in the state over the next few years. In recent history, the focus has been on funding growth only. That leaves institutions to juggle budgets to cover expenses apart from putting students into a classroom with an instructor, such as student aid, libraries and dozens of other expenses. It also is an incentive to the schools to pack in new students without thought to the varying missions of the institutions, Hillyard said.
Recent projections predict a steady growth in excess of 2 percent per year in the system over the next 20 years.
Putting enrollment caps in place to limit the number of students may become a necessary alternative, said Rep. Gordon E. Snow, R-Roosevelt.
Rep. Richard M. Siddoway, R-Bountiful, suggested that creating a formula should be relatively simple if the cost of educating a student in any particular program were known. However, across the system, that cost varies considerably from general education to medical training and from campus to campus in the nine-institution system. Another college with 10 locations will be added soon with the advent of the Utah College of Applied Technology. UCAT is supposed to be in place Sept. 1.
Mixed in with the debate on a funding formula were a number of reports regarding higher education issues — each one invariably including a suggestion that more money would be needed in the future to maintain them. Among them:
A report by state fiscal analysts indicating that while Utah's economy is holding up better than the national economy, a slump is likely over the next few years. Revenue growth will be slower than it has been during the past few years, when the state enjoyed unprecedented surpluses.
Energy costs are expected to continue their climb. The state is paying more than $34 million per year for energy, and higher education consumes some two-thirds of that amount. Experts suggested that the state would do well to put money, including funds generated by bonding, if necessary, into obtaining expertise to steer through the upcoming "crisis" years.
Distance education has proved to be enormously effective, but concerns with filtering unsuitable information from public school computers and securing the system may require more money.
An engineering initiative funded during the last Legislative session is being implemented and over time will help Utah to catch up to the national growth rate in the technical sector. The first efforts are aimed at "removing the bottleneck" at the top of the pyramid, where postgraduate students are produced. But the initiative must reach clear down the line into public education. More funding will be sought in the 2002 legislative session to beef up engineering programs and equip labs to train students in current technology.
E-mail: tvanleer@desnews.com