Cuts hurt UNI especially

By Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier

----

There is real pain at the state universities these days, none greater than at the University of Northern Iowa.

Tuition keeps rising for students as the colleges deal with restricted flows of state funding.

Iowa Board of Regents President David Miles has been pleading with the Iowa Legislature all year to hear what he has to say: The universities have cut all the fat, any budget reductions now slice through muscle and bone.

Miles said the cuts to UNI, the University of Iowa and Iowa State have come to $118 million over the past three years.

Those budget cuts have a greater impact on UNI than its sister schools in Ames and Iowa City. UNI's budget is more dependent on state funding because of the greater percentage of in-state students and the fact UNI is not a major research institution.

“They sort of get both barrels,” Miles said of UNI in a message to a legislative committee.

UNI President Ben Allen has a great deal of experience in planning for sacrifice. UNI has dealt with the loss of about $20 million in state funding over several years by eliminating about 75 jobs, including a vice president position, as well as at least 16 academic programs and its baseball program.

If the university loses another $4 million to $7 million next year, as expected, some graduate programs will likely be eliminated and non-academic cuts, such as what happened with baseball, could be on the line.

UNI has been smart with how it has handled budget reductions to this point. Academic programs low in demand have been eliminated with little impact on the university's mission. The university has stepped up recruiting of out-of-state students, who not only bring diversity to enrich the learning experience but also pay higher tuition for an education.

Money issues at the universities have been consistent for several years.

Allen's predecessor, Robert Koob, left UNI five years ago. He was frustrated with the state of higher education in Iowa. Koob had accepted budget cuts for years, always waiting on promises of rosier budgets in the future. When he finally left the university in the spring of 2006, he withdrew a previous offer to stay on as adviser to the Board of Regents. He thought he would see funding restored in then-Gov. Tom Vilsack's budget, but was disappointed. So Koob packed up his knowledge and moved to California.

Our state universities have immense value in driving the economics of Iowa and producing leaders who will carry the state forward for years to come.

Continued budget cuts will eventually lead to real, measurable hits to the quality of education our students receive. In turn, that impacts the ability for Iowa, and Iowans, to compete across the nation and in the world.

The Legislature will have to make a decision at some point on whether the state feels it can continue to offer quality education as it has in the past.

If funding levels aren't reversed, the Legislature should give the regents more tools to work with to allocate funding among the universities and make major changes in how higher education works in Iowa.

---