With only three weeks left in the legislative session, lawmakers in both chambers are tackling higher education funding in their versions of the 2014 budget.
Last week both the Missouri Senate and House of Representatives approved all 13 appropriations bills that constitute their respective versions of the Fiscal Year 2014 operating budget. Each version was sent to the opposite chamber for reconciliation hearings this week. The General Assembly has until May 10 to pass a comprehensive version of the budget to take effect July 1.
Both plans call for a $34 million increase in funding to higher education institutions in Missouri and a $65.9 million increase for the state’s K-12 schools. The bump in higher education funding comes from House Bill 3, which originated in the House and was sponsored by House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Rick Stream, R-Kirkwood.
HB3 allots nearly $400 million to MU for general expenditures, a number not drastically different than the $397,780,981 allocation in the FY2013 budget.
The Senate version of the budget also calls for an across-the-board $500 raise for all state employees.
Senate Appropriations Chairman Sen. Kurt Schaefer, R-Columbia, said there weren’t radical differences between the House and Senate versions of the budget.
“On a lot of things, we’re in agreement with the House,” Schaefer said. “We did take the House position on the pay increase, the solid ($500) instead of the (2 percent increase), so there’s always a few things that House members want, just as we have some things in the Senate budget (that some individual members want), and those are the kind of things that tend to get traded out as we go into conference.”
An additional Senate bill specifically calls for a reorganization of the model Missouri uses to fund higher education institutions. Senate Bill 437, sponsored by Sen. David Pearce, R-Warrensburg, would create a new formula for calculating how much each public institution in the state receives in budgetary funding.
Currently, there are three methods by which the state can appropriate funding to higher education institutions: on a base-plus distribution or an across-the-board increase or decrease. Pearce’s model would base funding on a calculation of each school’s expenditures, divided into six categories: academic support, institutional support, instruction, public service, research and student services. Schools would further be categorized into one of seven sectors — associate, statewide technical education institution, bachelor, master, statewide liberal arts and sciences institution and research sectors — each with different factors into the budget calculation.
“It’s tough because we have 13 public 4-year institutions in the state,” Pearce said. “And they’re all different — they’re in different parts of the state, they have different missions and to come up with one standard to fit all is very, very difficult. I think it’s a step in the right direction. If you’re doing well, if you’re meeting the standards which you’ve established for yourself, then you get rewarded. And if not, then you’re going to get less funding from the state.”
Another bill sponsored by Pearce would change many of Missouri’s scholarship programs.
Senate Bill 378 would raise the academic standards for Missouri high school students seeking an A+, Bright Flight or Access Missouri scholarship. It would also require recipients of those scholarships to enroll in 24 credits in their first calendar year in university.
“The scholarship programs only last for so long,” Pearce said. “You can’t stay in college for five, six, seven years and expect the state to continue to pay for these scholarship programs. We’re sending a message that we want to be supportive, but we want to get you in and out as quickly as possible.”
Pearce emphasized the goal of SB378 is to shorten the time Missouri students receiving these scholarships take to obtain their degrees.
“The (private schools) do this very well,” Pearce said. “The privates get the schools in and out in four years, and one reason is because the cost is so high, and also for the traditional students, the parents realize they want to get them in and out as quickly as possible.”
Both SB437 and SB378 are still being deliberated in the Senate.