New regents task force to look at state funding model

CEDAR FALLS - Issues about how state funding is allocated among Iowa's three regent universities will be discussed by a new Board of Regents task force that will look at state funding levels and the model of distribution.

Board members have for some time wanted to analyze state funding levels and have that discussion, and the recent budget issues at the University of Northern Iowa have certainly brought it to the forefront, outgoing Regents President Craig Lang said Thursday.

"We need to look at the way funds are appropriated," said Lang, whose term as a regent expires April 30.

Lang announced at Thursday's meeting he has asked David Miles, a regent from Dallas Center whose six-year term also ends April 30, to lead the new task force that will eventually make recommendations to the board. Regent Katie Mulholland, of Marion, also will serve on the task force.

With the growing concern nationwide about the cost of higher education, historical trends show that in Iowa the most significant impact has been that state funds have become a smaller portion of the university general education budgets, while tuition makes up a larger portion, said Lang, of Brooklyn. The university budgets have grown, but state funding makes up a small percentage of those budgets, he said.

State funding in Fiscal Year 2012 was about 36 percent of the general university funding to the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and UNI, down from about 64 percent of the funding in FY 2001. Student tuition dollars made up 59 percent of the general university funding last year, up from 31 percent in FY 2001.

State money in the past has been distributed to the three universities on a 40/40/20 split, with the UI and ISU getting larger portions, Lang said.

That formula for dividing state appropriations hasn't been revisited for quite some time, Miles said, and members want to take a fresh look. There are no preordained results the board is looking for, he said, and they want to make sure to continue to support the missions of all three schools.

"But we certainly think there's an opportunity ... to re-examine those allocations, so that they're no longer locked into" what they are now, but rather are what makes sense in the current environment, Miles said.

However, the regents want to make sure they don't harm the universities as they are today. The process won't mean simply taking a bunch of money from one university and pushing that money to another, Lang said.

But UNI has faced budget challenges, and that's one issue that will be on the table for the task force, Miles said.

There is no timeline for the task force work and when recommendations will go to the regents. Lang expects the group will includes delegates and alumni from each university, for possible total membership of nine.

The task force charge consists of: a review of historical general university funding levels; how the state money supports the three distinct missions of the universities; the future funding needs of each campus; and the recommendation of a set of measurements that may help re-balance the equation, "linking dollars more directly to priorities," Lang said.