State Briefing Papers

Performance Budget Level Request 01

CORE FUNDING

WSU RECOMMENDATION AND FISCAL SUMMARY

Effective research universities are essential to Washington’s future.  They provide access to a nationally competitive level of education, they train the next generation of entrepreneurs, scientists and business leaders and they produce the knowledge that drives economic development.  Washington State University joins with the University of Washington in submitting a budget request to ensure that quality programs are available for the next generation of students.  Our request is that the state provide additional support per student incrementally each year.  Catching up with the funding levels of competing states will take several biennia.  In 2005-2007 we request an increase of $51 million. 

	2005-06	2006-07	2005-07 Biennium
General Fund-State	$16,988,000	$33,976,000	$50,964,000

 

This decision package addresses several of the priorities of government recommendations selected by OFM for the budget development process.  These are listed here and referenced below:

·         Improve faculty recruitment and retention. This includes salary increases and increased advanced degree production.

·         Programmatic student funding levels.

·         Improve student retention and graduation rates.  This involves increased course offerings, as well as increased counseling and other services.

Few things are as important to the long-term well being of the state as maintaining high quality research universities.  Yet, the state of Washington invests less in its university students than do competing states, and that support has been decreasing.  Washington’s students deserve better. 

It’s vitally important for the future of the state that the research universities are funded at a level that will enable them to deliver the maximum benefit to our state’s future.  For the state to be competitive, its universities must be competitive. Currently the funding for UW and WSU lags

behind that of public research universities in the rest of the country, making it very difficult to attract and retain faculty and staff.

The state and the institutions should commit to the following goals:

a.   Funding per student should be no less than the seventy-fifth percentile of peer institutions nationally.

b.   The state should cover at least half the cost of instruction for resident undergraduate students.

The preferred method of achieving these goals is to increase state funding over several years according to a predetermined schedule.  This request would close the gap over a six year period.  If substantial increased state funding is not possible, we request that the respective Boards of Regents have authority to adjust enrollment and tuition rates to achieve the appropriate balance.  The specifics of the relationship of funding to enrollment and tuition will be addressed in the performance contracts being developed with the Governor’s office.

Core funding would buy superior technology, state-of-the-art equipment, and improved faculty and staff salaries.  It would enhance faculty/student ratios, provide more classes and mentoring, and lead to improved learning and graduation rates. 

Washington State University has been a tremendous asset to the citizens of Washington.  Its research and instructional programs have fueled economic activity, attracted funding and jobs from other states, improved the food supply and health of Washington consumers, and trained the scientists and entrepreneurs that have created prosperity for the state.  Yet state support per student has declined as the importance of university activity has increased. The trend of declining support for higher education must be reversed.

·         Real state funding per student has dropped 18% since 1993.

State appropriations per student have failed to keep up with inflation, yet the institution is expected to provide more programs at more locations than ever before.

·         State funding per FTE student is below our competitors in other states. 

Washington students deserve university programs funded as well as those in other states.  The average state funding per student at competitive peer institutions is $1,215 or 12.5% more than at WSU.

How would this core education funding be used?

Through its strategic planning activities the university is committed to:

·         offer the best undergraduate education at a research university, and

·         nurture a world-class environment for research, scholarship, graduate education, the arts, and engagement.

To these ends Washington State University would:

·         improve quality in our educational offerings at all campuses, including distance education;

·         provide students with smaller class size, enriched advising and mentoring;

·         retain world class faculty members to work with students;

·         expand research activities, especially in areas of strategic importance to the state.

Core education support expenditures would include:

·         Improve faculty recruitment and retention (POG goal). Salary increases.

A major determinant of instructional and research quality is the quality of the faculty.  We have already lost to competing states a number of top faculty and are in danger of losing more.  The highest priority for use of additional state funding is salary increases.

The table shows that there is a significant gap between the average salary paid to WSU faculty relative to that of most of its competitors. Based on Fall 2003 salary data, WSU ranked 20^th out of 23 institutions for average salary, with a shortfall of 17.9% below the peer average. Even after reallocating funds internally to award an increase in January 2004, the current shortfall between WSU’s average salary and the average of its competitors is  14.6%. With no salary increase scheduled for 2004-2005 the gap will widen once again to an estimated 17.7% for the fiscal year.  Increases in other states in 2005 – 2007 will increase the funding needed in Washington to well over 20%.  

WSU and Competitors, Average Salary, Top Three Ranks, Fall 2003
Rank	Institution	Average Salary
1	University of California at Davis	90,321
2	Cornell University	89,530
3	University of Illinois – Urbana	86,203
4	University of Wisconsin – Madison	84,747
5	University of Minnesota – Twin Cities	83,572
6	Ohio State University	82,784
7	Michigan State University	81,628
8	Purdue University	79,626
9	Texas A & M University	78,606
10	North Carolina State University	76,757
11	Virginia Tech	76,359
12	Iowa State University	75,141
13	Louisiana State University	75,140
14	University of Florida	74,779
15	Colorado State University	74,548
16	University of Georgia	73,779
17	University of Tennessee – Knoxville	73,294
18	Auburn University	70,284
19	University of Missouri – Columbia	68,742
20	Washington State University	(Spring ’04:  67,883) 65,974
21	Oklahoma State University	64,639
22	Kansas State University	64,141
23	Mississippi State University	63,333

WSU proposes merit increases for faculty, graduate assistants and administrative/professional employees each of the two years.  In addition, some funding would be devoted to a recruitment and retention pool to prevent losing critical employees.  (Funding for classified staff is addressed in separate decision packages.)

·         Improve faculty recruitment and retention (POG goal). Increased advanced degree production.

WSU’s strategic plan calls for increasing the number of PhD students, particularly in high demand fields.  This would help increase the supply of faculty for institutions through out the state and the country.  Attracting qualified graduate students requires providing graduate assistant positions.  Some of the core funding provided through this request would be dedicated to graduate assistant stipends.

·         Improve student retention and graduation rates (POG goal). 

During the past few years Washington State University has implemented a number of initiatives that were aimed, either wholly or in part, at improving the efficiency with which undergraduates complete their studies at the university.  Among the wealth of examples of initiatives included in our various Accountability Plans, the implementation of some has been severely limited by lack of funding:

The Four-Year Degree Guarantee (Accountability Plan 1997-99) has not been popular with students and has fallen into nearly complete disuse.  It has, however, generated a much more useful and widely used tool, as nearly all undergraduate degree programs now have a four-year course of studies laid out in the catalog itself.  However, increasing enrollments combined with decreasing funding are challenging the university’s ability to offer enough courses and sections to make these plans a realistic option for many students.  

Freshmen in intensive learning community programs (e.g., Teniwe and Freshman Seminar) continue to have combinations of higher freshman to sophomore retention rates, higher freshman grades, fewer deficiencies, and more credit hours completed than similar students.  Plans to expand both programs to include much more of the freshman class (Accountability Plan 1999-01) have been frustrated by shrinking budgets.

Tutoring Programs and Supplemental Instruction were both mentioned in earlier plans.  Students who use tutoring early and often earn higher subsequent grades and have fewer deficiencies than similar gpa students who use tutoring sporadically or not at all.  Again, further expansion of these valuable support systems has been limited by the current budget environment.

·         Programmatic student funding levels (POG goal).  
Improved funding for other high demand fields.

Under funding for core programs has reduced flexibility to expand access to high demand programs.  Shortages of faculty and equipment in fields like computer science prevent the University from opening additional sections of classes to meet student demand.  Funding at levels competitive with other states would allow the institution to accommodate more students in fields with high costs, including health sciences and technology.

Core funding would also be used to increase resident student enrollments in veterinary medicine. Click here for more information on veterinary medicine core funding.

·         Other Quality Improvements

Other priorities include reducing class size, improving faculty student ratios in high demand fields, increasing technology, and improved maintenance of state facilities.

Performance Measures

If fully funded, this decision package will improve the freshman retention rate, the six-year graduation rate, the number of student experiences with faculty and will reduce the salary gap between WSU faculty average salaries and that of our benchmark institutions.

 

Calculations
FY 2003
Peer state funding per FTE @ 75th percentile	$13,563
WSU state funding per FTE	9731
Shortfall per FTE	$3,832
Times target enrollment	20,247 FTE
Total shortfall	$77,586,504 per year
Annual increase needed to catch-up over six years
Plus inflation on state maintenance level base of $202,834,000 @ 2.0% per year to keep up with national competitors.
	$4,056,680 per year
Increment needed per year	$16,987,764