Tuition increase—2.8%—lowest in years; units encouraged to mount 3–5 percent salary programs

To view FY1999-2000 General Fund operating budget and student tuition and fee rate tables for the Ann Arbor campus, click here.

Cantor

The University will be able to focus on its highest academic priorities in the coming year with the lowest percentage tuition increase in more than a decade, thanks in large part to a generous state appropriation.

Tuition for all undergraduates—resident and non-resident, lower- and upper-division—will increase 2.8 percent. Tuition for most graduate students will increase 3 percent.

“Thanks to more than 150 years of state support and wise stewardship of the people of this state, Michigan is a great university,” said Provost Nancy Cantor at the July Regents’ meeting. “We are especially fortunate in the coming fiscal year in that we will benefit from an unusually generous increase in the state appropriation to the University. This permits us to ask the Regents for the lowest percentage increase in undergraduate tuition rates that we have sought in more than a decade. We hope that this combination—generous state appropriations and modest tuition increases—constitutes a formula that can be repeated in the years to come.”

Gov. John Engler, in a letter to the House of Representatives, noted that this year’s appropriations bill was intended to provide incentives for public universities which showed restraint by increasing tuition at or below 3 percent. “I am very pleased that we have been able to recommend a budget and a tuition increase that is good for our students and their families and also lower than the governor’s and the Legislature’s goals,” Cantor said.

The University’s state appropriation this year increased by 4.75 percent to $338.9 million, the highest increase in four years. Internally, the University has been able to save $1 million by reorganizing its instructional technology support programs and another $500,000 through programs that have reduced workers’ compensation costs.

The University also has reallocated millions of dollars toward its highest priorities, and has directed the largest share of its new revenues to academic programs. The total share of the budget devoted to academic programs increases again this year, Cantor noted.

Overall, general fund budget revenues this year—$928.3 million—are 4.27 percent higher than last year. More than three-quarters of the new revenues will go to expenditures for academic units—the schools and colleges and related activities—whose expenditures will increase by an average of 5.23 percent. Increases in administrative and service unit budgets will average 3.4 percent, and increases in general expenses, such as utilities, will average 1.63 percent.

Major University priorities outlined by Cantor include retaining faculty and staff, solidifying on-campus institutions that add to our “shared public culture,” and enhancing learning environments for students. “All of these are inextricably intertwined,” Cantor noted.

Retaining faculty and staff

“We must retain the faculty and staff who help make this the great public research university that it is,” Cantor said. Competition for faculty among the best schools in the country is fierce. She noted, for instance, that when LS&A faculty receive job offers from other institutions, the offers are, on average, 40 percent higher than their current U-M salary. “Deans repeatedly tell us,” she said, “that their highest priority for incremental funds is to shore up the salaries of those faculty most vulnerable to outside offers.”

Retaining and recruiting the best faculty requires not only an investment in salaries but also provision of the advanced technology and state-of-the-art laboratories and computer networks required for their teaching and scholarly work, particularly in the sciences.

Recent startup packages for College of Engineering senior faculty have averaged $260,000. In some areas, such as biomedical and chemical engineering and materials science, the costs can run as high as $800,000.

Cantor added that staff quality is an “important determinant of faculty quality.” Faculty rely on the support of numerous individuals, from departmental secretaries to public safety officers, allowing them to focus on learning and teaching. The higher the quality of support, the easier it is to attract and retain the best faculty. “Michigan,” she said, “has a reputation as a good place for faculty to work in no small part because of the competence and dedication of its staff.

“We are extremely fortunate to have a superb and highly dedicated staff,” Cantor added, but because of the tight labor market in southeast Michigan the University faces competition for top-quality staff similar to that of faculty. “We are experiencing sharp upward pressure on wages, increased vacancy rates and difficulty in filling open positions. These exist across all of our units and we cannot afford to ignore them,” Cantor stated.

In a media briefing July 12, Cantor said she has asked units to make faculty and staff salary increases a high priority, suggesting that units average 3 percent–5 percent for faculty and 3percent–4 percentfor staff. Administrative units will receive a 2.5 percent operating increase, and have been asked to use that and internal reallocation to mount their salary program.

Libraries, museums and similar on-campus institutions

These units, Cantor noted, “solidify and enhance the ‘shared public culture’ of the University and sustain relationships between the campus and the community.”

The University is a major artistic center in the state of Michigan, she said. “We have taken steps in this year’s budget to support campus-based creative activity and artistic presentations,” including collaborations with the University Musical Society, the Arts of Citizenship program and the Showcase of New Dramatic Writing.

Support for the University Library will continue to increase and the Museum of Art will have a substantial base budget increase. “With a new director, the Museum of Art is mounting a variety of programs that involve students and faculty from across the campus and that bring students and faculty to a vital area of outreach to broader communities,” Cantor said.

The Clements Library’s Americana collections are an “underutilized treasure.” To make the collections more accessible to researchers and the public, the Library will receive funding that will enable it to put the catalog of its entire collection online and add additional curatorial staff.

Rich learning environments

“We define ‘classroom’ as all of the places where student learning takes place,” Cantor said, “a set of locations that expands year-by-year.”

The budget proposal includes additional support for programs that offer a variety of “classroom” experiences, including: