State universities would suffer under proposed cuts, faculty leader says

A University of Iowa faculty leader says Iowa's regent universities and their students would suffer under budget cuts and the suspension of faculty development leaves - items included in a far-reaching budget bill approved by the Iowa House Wednesday.

“If it passes the Senate, and if the governor signs it, then the universities will suffer,” Ed Dove, president of the UI Faculty Senate and a biomedical engineering professor, said. “There's absolutely no doubt about it.”

House File 45 passed late Wednesday in the Iowa House along party lines. In the bill, House Republicans approved more than $500 million in spending cuts over the next three years.

Several items impact the state Board of Regents and the UI, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa. Those include a cap that would limit tuition increases to the Higher Education Price Index range; a suspension of professional development leaves for faculty through fiscal 2012; and $10 million in budget cuts in the current fiscal year, followed by $15 million in cuts each year in fiscal 2012 and 2013.

Regents President David Miles on Thursday said discussion regarding the bill is far from over.

“The bill is still in the early stages of development, and many, many, conversations will be taking place over the next several weeks with members of the Board of Regents, Iowa's public universities, and other key stakeholders in the Governor's Office, the Iowa House and the Iowa Senate, that will influence this process,” Miles said in an e-mailed statement.

The proposed cuts would be on top of the state funding reductions totaling about $134 million in fiscal 2009 and 2010 to the three universities and two special schools overseen by the regents.

Faculty leaves, called professional development assignments by the universities, help advance research, update teaching and bring in external money to hire people and buy supplies for research, Dove said. In fiscal years 2009 and 2010, such faculty leaves at the UI brought in $15 million in outside research dollars, led to 58 published books and more than 300 papers and helped with the development or revision of 270 courses, Dove said.

“Just from an economic point of view, it's a bad decision” to cut them, he said. “This is where faculty do their research, which is part of the job description. Eliminating this is essentially eliminating that part of the job description for many faculty members.”