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St. Cloud State University
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Budget forecasts bleak future
By Carol Seavey
Published:
Thursday, April 24, 2003
"You must have some good news for us, Joe," a voice boomed from the back of the Wabash room in Atwood Thursday morning. Rep. Joe Opatz (DFL-D15B) didn't have a lot of good news about the budget to share with SCSU faculty and staff.
About 20 people attended the meeting to discuss how the state budget will affect students and employees at SCSU.
There have been numerous bills in both the house and senate regarding higher education. One hot topic is the state grant program. In Pawlenty's budget, he would take $30 million from Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) and $30 million from the University of Minnesota and put that into the state grant fund.
However, about 50 percent of the grant money goes to the 18 percent of undergraduates who attend private colleges, Opatz said."It's fair to say that of the 60 million dollars that he (Gov. Pawlenty) takes from MnSCU and the U of M, about half of that is going to end up back in the form of financial aid for our own (MnSCU) students, and half of it is going to find its way to help students attend private college."
A senate bill in the Higher Education Budget Division that would have prohibited private, for profit college and university students from receiving state grants unofficially failed.
At the same time, Minnesota's Private Colleges have been running half page ads in both the Pioneer Press and the Star Tribune encouraging support of state grants for private school students.
"They've engaged in a powerful debate and Pawlenty is in their corner and the business interest... are supporting the high tuition, high aid approach to supporting low income students," Opatz said.
"Right now, 90 percent of all of the investment that we make in higher education, $3 billion a bi-enniem, 90 percent of that goes to the public sector," Opatz said. "Ten percent is diverted to the Higher Education Services Office (HESO) to support the state grant program. They're suggesting that ration move to a 70/30, that's about a 400 million shift from the public sector to the grant program. Of the $400 m, $200 million will not come back to the public sector."
At the meeting, people had the opportunity to ask Opatz if certain bills were moving forward.
A bond to improve Centennial Hall probably won't pass this session.
One concern is the senate bill restricting agreements between credit card companies and public and private colleges. The SCSU alumni association uses credit card agreements as a source of revenue.
Many people are also concerned about wage freeze.
Another concern was the possible cuts to Minnesota Care (MnCare) health insurance. Many students can get affordable healthcare through campus, but it's much more expensive to insure their kids, so they are often referred to MnCare.
There was a house bill that would have limited tuition increase to six percent. Opatz didn't think that was going anywhere.
"We're basically planning on 15 percent (increase in tuition)," Associate Vice President of Administrative Affairs Diana Burlison said. "Of course, everything can change....that's why we plan in tiers, if the budget becomes worse we will tack on another tier."
Burlison said that their goal is to make budget reductions that least impact the students and faculty.
"They are our customers, they are the people we serve. If we don't have our faculty, we can't serve our students so we have been very cautious about what reductions we've made that affect students. It really is important that students have confidence in being able to get their classes, complete their degrees, get their financial aid processed, be able to pay their bills, get advising and register."
State legislature was on a break and resumed Tuesday.
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