Articles Tagged: University of Northern Iowa

With University of Northern Iowa strapped for cash and its tuition revenue sliding, unionized faculty members are criticizing the administration for giving nearly $4.3 million of the campus’ general university funds to athletics in the 2023 budget year – which was almost $1 million more than planned.

With its outgoing Athletic Director David Harris headed to Tulane University in January, where he’ll assume the same role, the University of Northern Iowa on Wednesday announced former University of Iowa Athletic Director and retired Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby will step in as interim AD.

Just one year into the public portion of University of Northern Iowa's $250 million comprehensive fundraising campaign, the Cedar Falls campus already is most of the way to its goal — putting it more than two years ahead of schedule.

Despite warnings of a looming enrollment cliff threatening to decimate crops of high school graduates feeding thousands of colleges nationally, Iowa’s high school graduate numbers aren’t expected to dip below 2019 levels any time soon — at least through 2036.

Despite uncharacteristic discord on the Board of Regents over a list of diversity, equity, and inclusion recommendations, the board on Thursday approved the suggestions and asked the universities to produce progress reports and implementation plans by April.

But the University of Iowa is the only state campus where tuition income beat expectations in fiscal 2023.

The nonprofit “microlending” online website allows individuals to loan a little bit of money to small entrepreneurs around the world.

A Board of Regents “DEI study group” – having spent six months reviewing diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts across Iowa’s public universities following Legislative criticism – has pitched 10 recommendations of new policies and actions the campuses can take, including one ensuring no student, employee, applicant, or campus visitor is compelled to disclose their pronouns.

Food pantries on each of Iowa’s public universities have seen huge usage spikes of late – coinciding with rising tuition rates, soaring food prices and shifting demographics in a state seeing more first-generation, low-income and minority high school graduates headed to college.

The gift, given by Wilson Automotive Group owner and Chief Executive Officer David Wilson, represents the first time a college at the University of Northern Iowa has been named for a person.

Unlike Iowa’s public universities that reported larger student bodies this fall than last, many of Iowa’s private colleges saw enrollment drop this semester. And even those bucking the decline have smaller student bodies today than they did years ago before the pandemic struck.

In late May, Gov. Kim Reynolds signed new legislation into law requiring Iowa’s Board of Regents to report specific financial-success metrics of its public university graduates – including their median annual income one, five, and 10 years post-graduation; median debt of those who took out student loans; and the percent of a graduate’s income spent paying off student-loan debt.

This year’s Iowa Ideas conference will also touch on that growing impetus to “meet the needs of students” with a session asking what those needs are – including in the mental health realm.

The state produced a list of high-demand jobs after lawmakers created a new Iowa Workforce Grant and Incentive Program that set aside $6.5 million to motivate students across Iowa’s public universities to fill high-demand jobs.

Before approving its state appropriations request in advance of the upcoming Legislative session, Iowa’s Board of Regents on Thursday tacked on another $1 million specifically for “extended mental health resources at our three regent universities.”