After months of anxiety about decreased state support and increased undergraduate tuition, the Ohio State University Board of Trustees gave final approval to the university’s 2001-2002 budget at their Aug. 29 meeting.
The board was told the projected budget for the current fiscal year is expected to be more than $2.3 billion, a 3.2 percent increase from last year, excluding growth in student financial aid.
Bill Shkurti, senior vice president for business and finance, said the university needs a minimum annual increase of 3 to 4 percent just to keep operating at levels from the previous year.
As a result of this year’s tight budget, Shkurti said most units will not receive any increases for supplies and equipment, and faculty compensation will continue to fall below market. Academic Enrichment, a program started seven years ago to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration among faculty, has also been suspended, Shkurti added.
The budget figures include the approximate $323 million in state subsidy, which grew by only 1.6 percent from last year, the smallest increase in nine years.
Shkurti said, “This is the first time ever since the university was founded in 1870 that student tuition exceeds the state’s own support for the university.”
“What concerns all of us is a long-term trend where the state of Ohio is not able to do what other states are doing in terms of supporting higher education,” Shkurti said. “If continued, the state of Ohio will continue on a long term decline, which will mean more tax increases and higher tuition in the long run.”
Executive Vice President and Provost Ed Ray spoke of the need to concentrate on specific initiatives during difficult budget times in order to make progress.
“The area that we are most focusing on is improving the undergraduate student experience,” Ray said.
The improvements will be funded through the $4.6 million in additional revenue made available by the 9.3 percent increase in undergraduate tuition, Ray said.
The budget shows a large majority of those funds, $2 million, will go to increasing financial aid opportunities. In addition, $870,000 has been allocated to create 100 to 110 sections of high demand courses, with seats for close to 6,000 more students.
Living-learning programs on campus will also benefit from $250,000 from the extra tuition funds, Ray said.
“We’re continuing to move in the direction of more effectively personalizing the learning experience through living-learning centers,” Ray said. “We expect to have 39 separate centers here at the university.”
The remaining revenue will go toward upgrading computer labs and classrooms, improvements in faculty/TA development, funding for the new multicultural center and renovation of the Ohio Union, Ray added.
Both Shkurti and Ray expressed their concern over current salary levels of faculty and staff to the board.
“Compensation is job one next year,” Ray said. “The goal is to, over the next several years, get (compensation) near the midpoint of our peer institutions which we budget ourselves against.”
The board will receive a full report on how OSU will address faculty and staff salaries later this year.
In other action, the board approved the appointments of Jan Kronmiller as dean of the College of Dentistry and Karen Bell as interim dean of the College of the Arts. Kronmiller previously served as chair of orthodontics at Oregon Health Sciences University, and Bell served as chair of OSU’s dance department.
