IV. Recommendations
Efficiency Measure: Appropriation per Student vs. Graduation Rates
A. Funding Comprehensive Institutions to Meet Student Enrollment Demands
To meet undergraduate enrollment growth and build
capacity in a time of constrained state funding support, resources
should be directed to those institutions that offer the greatest “bang
for the buck,” those that require a lower funding per FTES and yet have
high graduation rates.
If Maryland’s public universities are to meet growing
enrollment demands, it would make good fiscal sense to redistribute
enrollments and state funds to the comprehensive public universities.
The question is how best to allocate state dollars in order to promote
access and affordability.
B. Insuring Greater Parity in state Funding Among Institutions
In the funding guideline model, Salisbury University
would not expect to be funded at the same FTES level as the flagship
university or the University of Maryland, Baltimore professional
schools, but we would expect to be funded at the same levels as
our national peers. An incentive was built into the model: if and
when an institution outperformed its peers on most of the comparison
variables, it would then have the opportunity to select from among a
group of aspirational peers – schools it would most like to emulate –
for future evaluations, including higher per FTES funding levels.
We would like to be moving toward the per FTES level of funding of our
aspiration peers, yet we still are well below the funding levels of our
current performance peers.
Salisbury University has been unable to close the
considerable funding gap that continues to exist in the level of state
funding that SU receives as compared to its peers both in the USM and
nationally. Indeed, Salisbury University received $1,652 less per
FTES in 2002 than its performance peers. The funding gap was due in
part to enrollment growth that SU experienced in FY2000 and FY2001.
Responding to the need to meet increasing enrollment demands, SU grew by
20% (approximately 1,000 FTES) at a time when state appropriations did
not fund this growth. The $1,652 differential when multiplied across
SU’s 5,826 calculated FTES in-state undergraduate students would have
been an additional $9,625,552 in state appropriations for that year
alone if the University had been funded at the average peer
funding level per FTES. And consider that these funds are lost to
SU year after year.
C. Providing Adequate Support for Higher Education Overall
The General Assembly will continue to grapple with the
issue of funding the Bridge to Excellence in Public Schools Act, passed
in 2002. The Thornton Bill represents the legislature’s
recognition that education is key to the health of the economy and
stability of the state. The state’s responsibility for funding
education adequately must also extend to higher education. While
Maryland ranks fourth
among the 50 states and the District of Columbia in per capita
disposable personal income, Maryland is 38th in state
general funds for higher education per $1,000 of personal income.
My fellow presidents and I ask for meaningful recognition
of the importance of higher education in shaping a productive and
responsible citizenry, in producing well-qualified workers, and in
spreading knowledge that contributes to the health and welfare of our
nation. We ask that you allow us to keep tuition affordable
through more adequate, reliable appropriations. The state has
demonstrated its commitment to K-12 education; now concomitant support
is urgently needed for public higher education.
In return, we promise an effective and efficient
University, one that provides high-quality education to meet the
workforce needs of our state.
D. Tackling Faculty and Staff Workload Issues
In the past 18 months, we have lost six faculty from
tenure/tenure track positions to other universities. In every
case, these departing faculty were offered employment offers with lower
teaching loads
and, in most cases, higher salary. Six out of our 254 faculty
lines may not sound like a huge number, but the loss in terms of talent
and experience with SU’s programs and students and the cost in terms of
replacement are significant.
In hiring efforts, three out of 14 searches failed last
year because qualified candidates who were interviewed went elsewhere.
Among the remaining searches, we lost some of our top candidates to more
competitive offers, both in terms of salary and workload.
With all of its achievements, Salisbury University has
failed to meet one of its Managing for Results Goals: achieving the 85th
percentile of national salary levels. This level was selected as a
reasonable goal for attracting and maintaining talented faculty who
would support the standards of quality education for which Salisbury
University has become known. Interestingly, at William & Mary
College, students approved a symbolic $5 per student fee increase to be
applied to faculty salaries to help prevent the continued loss of
faculty to other schools paying more. We may consider implementing a
similar strategy at Salisbury University.
Not only are our staff doing their jobs without having
had a pay raise for the last three years, they have taken on the work of
colleagues who have left or have been laid off without replacement.
I can tell you frankly that I have employees whose health is being
threatened by extra work demands. SU faculty and staff are making
tremendous sacrifices to benefit our students and deserve much praise.
E. Responding to Proposals to Cap Tuition
I urge you to allow institutions
flexibility to set tuition rates based on student demand, state support
per FTES, mission, and performance. Salisbury University needs to be
able to catch up with the tuition rates charged by other comparable USM
institutions. An across-the-board generalized tuition cap will handicap
SU because our tuition is lower than that at the other comprehensive
universities and our appropriation per FTES is also lower.
Parents and students are understandably concerned about
rising costs, but let us not forget that the recent tuition increases
were the direct result of deep cuts in state funding.
At SU, $400,000 of the tuition increase has been
earmarked for University scholarships in the FY04 budget plan. We
are now offering more undergraduate need-based scholarships than
merit-based scholarships. Further, I will soon announce a major
private gift that will add $80,000 per year to our pool of scholarship
dollars.
Tuition increases are a national, not local, phenomenon.
Maryland’s tuition rates at public higher education institutions are not
higher than those of other neighboring states, especially considering
Maryland’s per capita income as compared to other states.
Presidents do not wish to raise tuitions; we do hope that
adequate general fund support per FTES at USM institutions will help
ensure that our campuses have reasonable reserves to provide quality
higher education.
The perception that the universities have been bloated by
excessive funding in the late 1990s is simply false. Today,
Salisbury University is actually funded (per student) at a level lower
than that in the early 1990s.
State Appropriations per FTES at SU 1990 and 2004
