Qualitative differences

Engler funding plan was recipe for disaster

Everyone at the University can breathe a little easier now that Gov. John Engler's plan to revamp the way state colleges and universities are funded has been killed by a Senate panel in Lansing. Engler's plan would have been disastrous for large research institutions like the University and Michigan State University. The Senate's reasonable answer to Engler's plan, a far less rigid proposal by Sen. John Schwarz (R-Battle Creek), is a better approach to the funding of higher education and deserves to be looked at carefully.

The now-dead funding proposal, which zipped through the state House of Representatives earlier this year, called for dividing each of the state's 15 public colleges and universities into four groups. Colleges and universities within each group would have received the same amount of money for each in-state student enrolled. The plan would have resulted in an insignificant 3 percent increase in state funding for the University, Wayne State University and Eastern Michigan University. MSU, Engler's alma mater, would have received a 4.6 percent increase.

The lack of appreciation for the qualitative differences between each of the state's colleges and universities demonstrated by Engler and many in the legislature is unsettling. No one in the university community should forget such a gross over-simplification of matters when the lawmakers responsible for the plan come up for reelection.

The notion that the issue of funding for higher education in Michigan can be settled by simply placing each institution into one of four tiers is absurd. Every school in the state's system of public colleges and universities plays a unique role in the larger scheme of higher education and therefore has different funding needs.

In general, the University, with its large number of graduate students and research facilities, requires more state funds in order to accomplish its educational goals. Specifically, with the cost of constructing the new Life Sciences Institute looming in the near future, the University will need to have access to more state funds if it is to keep tuition from raising yet again.

Last year Lansing only raised the University's funds by 3 percent but tuition shot up by 4.5 percent. Lawmakers pressuring the University to use the rate of inflation as a benchmark for setting tuition can not justify allowing state support for higher education to slide. It ought to be obvious to Engler and certain legislators that cutting-edge research does not move ahead in harmony with Michigan families' ability to pay for higher education.

Engler's plan to appropriate money to groups of public colleges and universities will hurt Michigan's smaller institutions as well. Like their larger counterparts, schools like Ferris State University and Lake Superior State University have their own specific needs that must be addressed individually by lawmakers in Lansing.

Engler and certain members of the House must take note of the flaws inherent in grouping Michigan's public colleges and universities as they hammer out a compromise between the Engler plan and Schwarz's proposal. If lawmakers want to make higher education more affordable to Michigan residents and simultaneously maintain the status of some of the state's colleges and universities as first class research institutions, they must be willing to individually address each institution's specific needs.

05-24-99