The Michigan State House and Senate passed an appropriations bill that increased funding for state universities by $64 million on July 3.
"We're very pleased," said associate Vice President for University Relations Cynthia Wilbanks. This year the University will receive $315 million, $12 million more than it received the year before.
State Sen. John Schwartz (R-Eaton County), chair of the Senate's subcommittee on appropriations for higher education, was particularly pleased with how easily the new funding passed.
"I think it actually went pretty well this year," Schwartz said. "There was a lot of cooperation between the House and the Senate."
State Sen. Alma Wheeler Smith (D-Washtenaw County) said that this appropriations bill was a great improvement over last year's. The amount spent last year by the state on higher education was "embarrassing," she said.
"It was about on par with what we spent on the Department of Corrections," Smith said.
The overall state budget grew by only about 2 percent, but the amount appropriated to each state university will increase by at least 4 percent, Schwartz said. The University's funding will increase by 4.2 percent.
Both senators claimed that Gov. John Engler was the force behind this disproportionate expansion of funding.
Schwartz, a GOP member, said secondary education won out this year because "the governor has historically been a very strong advocate of higher education."
Smith, a Democrat gave different reasoning for the bill's passage.
"Let's remember that the governor is running again (for re-election)," Smith said.
The bill's timing has sent some University administrators scrambling. Provost J. Bernard Machen will be presenting the University's budget to the University Board of Regents later this week. The extra $12 million dollars could conceivably cause some last-minute changes.
"We received word from the state appropriations rather late in the process," said associate Vice President for University Relations Lisa Baker.
Wilbanks said that the University will also receive an additional $1.7 million that earmarked for maintenance, equipment and development of the University's infrastructure.
The general funding can be used for anything the regents choose, but Schwartz said he hoped that some of it would be spent on keeping the ever rising cost of education in check.
He expressed a wish for the increase in funding to "allow the schools in '97-'98 to keep their tuition rates somewhere around the rate of inflation."