I have two
issues to discuss in today’s blog post.
First, I wanted to do a follow-up to my last blog post regarding the
state of the MSU budget. I think it safe
to say that the budget situation has improved in the past several months, which
is certainly good news. Second, I am
happy to announce that the MSU Faculty Association is finally ready to give an
intermediate report in a public meeting for all MSU Faculty members regarding
our listening campaign over the past 6 months.
MSU’s and Missouri’s Budget
First, let me
briefly note the very positive news about the budget and tax receipts in the
state of Missouri. Governor Nixon noted
those positive at a news conference he held this past Monday a summary of which
you can read at:
To summarize:
1.
The
State general revenue fund is up currently over the past fiscal year by 18.5%. Income tax collections, which are the largest
source of tax collections, are up 6.1% for the current fiscal year and continue
to show improvement each month.
2.
Gov.
Nixon announced that he would release the ~ $8.5M of withholding from the
current FY budget in higher education.
Of this, $7.1M is to go to four year colleges including MSU. This is an announcement that the current FY
higher education budget will be fully funded, which has been extremely rare in
the recent past.
3.
At
his recent State of the State address, Gov. Nixon released his budget for the
next fiscal year, which has built in an approximately 4% increase in funding
for higher education with, as I understand, some possibility that performance
funding will be applied for that budget year.
These
announcements and, especially, the trend in tax collections for Missouri, are
extremely positive. If acted upon by the
legislature, the increase in state funding for higher education will be the
first in Missouri since the beginning of the recent financial crisis.
There
remain, of course, important concerns on campus at MSU regarding budgetary
priorities. Most importantly, it remains
the case that the core mission of MSU, defined to include academics
(instruction), research, and public service remains underfunded in the MSU
budget. Notwithstanding President
Smart’s recent announcement that MSU had met all five of the Performance
Funding measures by the State CBHE (Clifs-notes-vol-2-no-4) the method by which MSU met the core
mission requirement was solely a result of changes in how the numbers were
calculated (apparently mandated by the data collection protocol and not by MSU)
and not by any actual improvement. In
fact, funding of MSU’s core mission actually fell slightly as a percent of the
total budget when discounting the changes in the accounting method. As a result, the core mission at MSU remains
underfunded in the budget and needs to be addressed for future performance
funding.
Improving funding for
MSU’s core mission, especially funding for instruction and research, remains
one of the fundamental priorities of the MSU Faculty Association.
Informational Meeting
for All MSU Faculty Members
To
the right, you will notice a link for a flyer regarding our upcoming meeting to
report the results of the MSUFA one-on-one listening survey of faculty. This has been a time-consuming and labor
intensive activity and is far from done.
Let me summarize the information on the flyer:
·
All
MSU Faculty are invited to an information meeting about our listening survey
and the MSU Faculty Association.
·
Date/Time:
February 21, 2013 @ 3:30 to 5 pm.
·
Place:
University Heights Baptist Church, 1010 South National Avenue (on the SE corner
of National and Grand) just south of the Educational Community Credit Union.
Come in the Grand Street door and you will be directed to the meeting room.
We
will have a panel of speakers, who will present the finding from the listening
survey including both MSU Faculty Association members and representatives of
the Missouri NEA. You are cordially
invited to come and learn what your colleagues view as the major concerns they
have about their jobs at MSU and what they think about collective bargaining at
MSU.
There
will be a Question and Answer session and light refreshments will be
served. Please come and join us as we
discuss the future of MSU.
