Olympia Update No 7• March 28, 2005
From: Larry Ganders,
Assistant to the President
925 Plum St. SE - Building 4, P.O. Box 43165, Olympia, WA 98504-3165
For
a picture and briefing paper on the proposed Biotech/Life Sciences Bldg, go to
WSU Biotech paper.
For a printer-friendly Microsoft Word version, click
here
Gregoire
charges state Senate budget
‘Gives With One
Hand – Takes With The Other;’
Spokane
Nursing Building fully funded
Proposed capital construction and operating budgets for Washington State
University released today by the state Senate fell well short of the
recommendations announced last week by Gov. Christine Gregoire.
Gov. Gregoire’s budget was a
positive and straightforward commitment to fund higher education; the Senate
budget falls short of that commitment.
The Senate budget charges
students higher tuition but invests less money in student programs than the
governor, funds more student enrollment increases but at substantially less
dollars per student, cuts programs, and provides less capital construction
dollars.
Positive highlights of the
Senate budget includes full funding for the Spokane Nursing Building, which will
relocate and expand WSU’s College of Nursing at the Spokane Riverpoint campus.
The nursing building was not recommended by the governor. It also funded more
than $30 million in minor works and $8.5 million for equipment. Also on the plus
side, the Senate funded salary increases ($15 million) for all WSU faculty and
staff.
But those significant
improvements were not enough to offset the disappointment of WSU officials
including President Lane Rawlins, who was in Olympia today when it was confirmed
that the $57 million Pullman Biotechnology/Life Sciences Building was not funded
by the Senate and that the operating budget contains cuts to existing university
programs.
The Senate hiked student
tuition 7 percent, for resident
undergraduate students, yet captured half to spend on programs outside of the
university. That “tuition offset” in the Senate budget is structured so it would
also force the university to impose 8.5 percent to 11 percent increases on
non-resident and graduate students or face additional budget cuts. All of the
state’s four-year institutions have protested the tuition offset, charging that
it reinstates the policies of the 1990s where new enrollments and programs are
added to the university at the expense of existing students and programs.
Both the proposed budget of
Gregoire and former Gov. Gary Locke had invested 100 percent of the tuition
increases in the student’s university. Gregoire charged that the Senate’s
tuition policy “gives with one hand and then takes away with the other.”
“We can’t go on – as the
Senate does – raising tuition and then grabbing new tuition dollars to pay for
increased enrollment,” the governor said in a written release today. “I want the
state to meet the demand for new enrollments, and I want tuition to go to
improving the quality of education that students get in our higher education
system,” she said.
Washington State
University students will have $14.6 million in tuition increase money snatched
by the state in the Senate plan, WSU
informed the Senate Ways and Means Committee in a budget hearing this evening.
WSU also testified that the tuition offset raises havoc with other programs.
Like the governor, the state Senate invested $2 million into providing more
resident student positions in the WSU College of Veterinary Medicine. However,
the tuition offset will take back $577,000 from the college, causing damaging
reductions to veterinary medicine programs.
Despite investing $8.3
million for additional students in the WSU system, $1.1 million more than
Gregoire, the funding is structured in such a way that funding per student is
inadequate.
The inadequate funding
may hit the branch campuses hard. For
instance, Gregoire funded 100 students per year for upper-division in
Vancouver at $7,000 per year. The Senate funded twice as much – 200 students per
year – but at only $5,500. Gregoire also provided for some lower division
funding for Vancouver at $6,300 per year while the Senate has no special funding
rate for
freshmen and sophomores.
WSU Pullman received $5,500
per student in the Senate and Gregoire budgets. The Senate provided 261 new
students each year compared to 150 each year recommended by Gregoire. But the
Senate budget compounds the problem by directing that 70 percent of the new
enrollments be exclusively used for community college transfers, meaning those
new students will be in more expensive junior and senior-level courses.
Senate orders $2.1
million base cut to WSU. The Ways and
Means budget requires a 1 percent reduction in so-called non-instructional areas
like libraries, student services, academic support, physical plant, research,
extension, and
administration.
The Senate capital
budget ignores the higher education priority list for WSU:
- The
Biotechnology/Life Sciences Building, funded at $45 million by Locke and
Gregoire, received zero funding in the Senate budget.
Support is reportedly teetering in the House
as well, though House Republicans have steadfastly argued for the project.
Lobbyists for graduate students and the Washington Association of Wheat
Growers joined WSU in expressing their concern during the Ways and Means
hearing Monday but there appeared to be little expectation that the
committee would reconsider the building.
- The Tri-Cities
Bioproducts building was funded by the Senate at $13.1 million,
among the rare places where major projects matched the priority list. That
gives the green light to the partnership with Battelle Pacific Northwest
National Laboratories. Mike Schwenk of Battelle in Richland was among a
number of community leaders that were in Olympia Monday to meet with House
Higher Education Chair Phyllis Kenney about future directions for the
Tri-Cities campus.
- The Wastewater
Reclamation project, which received some start-up construction funds in the
Gregoire budget and was on the priority list, was not funded in the Senate
Ways and Means budget.
- In a surprise move,
the Senate funded a $10.6 million Vancouver Student Services building which
WSU had anticipated for the 2007-2009 biennium and was not on the list.
The Senate budget also provided
$3.3 million in design funds for an Applied Technology and Classroom
Building, $3.6 million for design of an undergraduate classroom building,
and $5 million for campus infrastructure. None of those projects were in the
Gregoire budget.
For more information call: Larry Ganders, Assistant to the
President, 360-956-2165
