Lansing - It’s official. MSU will receive no funding cuts next year provided it keeps tuition increases at or below 8.5 percent.
Gov. John Engler signed a bill into law at a press conference Monday. Under the law, the Legislature will not cut funds to Michigan’s 15 public universities as long as the schools keep tuition increases at or below 8.5 percent or $425, whichever is greater.
“It keeps university funding rock-solid,” Engler said. “I’m proud of the work the Legislature did.”
All of Michigan’s 15 public universities have agreed to Engler’s compromise. If any university breaks the mark, some funds will be taken away and redistributed to the complying schools.
Central Michigan University, which voted in December to raise tuition 28 percent, is expected to go for the $425 amount, an actual increase of around 10 percent.
Engler said universities around the country have seen funds cut.
“If you shortchange higher education it seems to me you risk shortchanging our future,” he said.
Under the bill, MSU will receive $325,982,300.
“It’s been years since we received a flat increase,” MSU President M. Peter McPherson said.
Last year, the university received a 1.5 percent increase from the state and raised tuition 8.9 percent.
But the deal, which McPherson has called an “informal covenant of responsibility,” is still a good one for the university, he said.
The bill’s passage comes earlier than usual - three months before the next fiscal year begins July 1.
“It’s helpful to know early,” McPherson said.
The higher education budget signed by Engler also includes $2 million for the Rare Isotope Accelerator, a $900 million U.S. Department of Energy project MSU is competing for.
State funding for the project has been public knowledge since January, but the fact it’s official is great news, said Konrad Gelbke, director of MSU’s National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory.
“It’s an extremely important step for the state of Michigan to take,” he said. “It shows the commitment from the governor to really foster the physical sciences.”
MSU and the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago are the chief competitors for the accelerator. Gelbke said it could be up to two years before the U.S. Department of Energy makes a decision on where to build the facility.
“We have to keep the people on board who are working on this and we also have to expand our technical operations,” Gelbke said.
