EDITORIAL: CMU will feel effects of 23.3-percent cut beyond 2011-12 despite incentive funds
Severe higher education budget cuts will whittle down Central Michigan University’s state appropriations to unprecedented levels in 2011-12 if approved by the legislature.
The brunt of the financial ramifications should not unduly burden students through tuition hikes, but should be mitigated by decreased spending and personnel salary cuts from the top down.
The cuts were based on a distorted average of CMU’s tuition hikes over the last five years. Gov. Rick Snyder's budget experts failed to incorporate the CMU Promise into the formula used to determine state appropriations to universities, resulting in higher cuts at CMU than any other public university in Michigan.
As the CMU Promise phased out, "super seniors" transferred from the tuition rate cohort they belonged to since they were freshmen to the much higher rate of the current academic year. Since the seniors did not experience an increase in tuition for four years, their fifth-year tuition rate jumped higher than the tuition hike from the previous year absorbed by students who were never on the CMU Promise.
This progression of events augmented CMU's tuition hike average more than the actual increases.
The unwarranted sting from the 23.3-percent cut may not be felt during the 2011-12 school year because of additional funding from the tuition incentive grant awarded for increasing tuition by no more than 15 percent, but neither the governor nor the budget office has informed university administrators how CMU will receive that money or if it will be guaranteed in the future.
Administrators fear the grant will be allocated as one-time funding instead of funneling into CMU’s base. If so, CMU will not be able to count on the $6,677,800 in incentive funds for the 2012-13 school year and beyond. In effect, CMU really will receive a 23.3-percent cut in funding instead of 15 percent.
Snyder has yet to appease the fears of university presidents critical of the plan, which has all but confirmed the funds will be one-time monies.
The governor, budget office personnel and local politicians have all opined that they understand the proposed cuts are deep and difficult to absorb, but are necessary to balance the budget. In the future, they said, funds will be available to make higher education a priority.
To compensate for these cuts until that theoretical point years ahead, CMU has several options: It could raise tuition, cut programs or decrease salaries, among others.
As many faculty and lower-level staff have already felt the chill of pay freezes, it would be a true show of leadership for the administration's higher-ups to take pay cuts and reductions in those little niceties that make being an executive at CMU look so posh — complimentary housing, cars, gadgets and other benefits certainly included.
