Compared to a 15 percent cut to MSU’s state funding in 2011-12, MSU saw more government support for the 2012-13 fiscal year, when Gov. Rick Snyder signed the 2012 fiscal year budget Tuesday afternoon, making the state budget law at the George W. Romney Building in Lansing.
MSU will receive a gross appropriation of approximately $298,733,800 from the higher education portion of the budget, with about $3.4 million allocated specifically for performance funding, compared to $283,685,200 last fiscal year.
Snyder said signing the state’s overall $48 billion budget was exciting, but more needs to be done in the future to help universities, which were allocated about $11.3 billion.
“We actually increased (support) for community colleges and universities, and I’m proud to say we are making progress there,” Snyder said. “There’s still more to be done, but we’re moving in the right direction.”
However, several trustees at last week’s MSU Board of Trustees meeting felt less pleased with Michigan’s budget, complaining of lack of financial support from the state.
Trustee Dianne Byrum said she is frustrated with the state’s appropriations to higher education.
“The decisions being made are not born in reality of what is going on in the university,” she said at the meeting.
After the meeting, MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon announced that she now feels MSU is in line with the eligibility requirements the budget appropriation committee created, after the board passed a 3.5 percent tuition increase below the state’s 4 percent tuition cap. MSU also will be getting rid of the health insurance mandate for the 2012-13 academic year, replacing it with a mandatory form that students must fill out about their insurance situation.
MSU’s mandate, which caused about 320 students to pay approximately $1,505 to purchase Aetna insurance, was a source of tension between the Legislature and the university last academic year.
The new form, which only will require students to specify whether or not they have insurance, seems to be in compliance with the budget appropriations committee’s guidelines that do not permit universities hoping to get performance funding to mandate health insurance purchases for students, said Sen. Roger Kahn, R-Saginaw and chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
If MSU is found not to be in compliance with the guidelines, it might not receive all of the $3.4 million specified as performance funding.
State Budget Director John Nixon said he has not had time to review MSU’s mandate.
“MSU’s generally got some really good rationale behind what they’re doing, and so certainly I’ll sit down and look through it,” he said.
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