by JACK DUGAN
Ever since Gov. Terry Branstad made the announcement that Iowa’s public higher-education institutions will receive another loss in state funding, this time slated at a staggering $24 million, Iowa’s three public universities have been scrambling to find a solution.
With good reason, as historically, when universities are poorly funded, they are poorly staffed. UI faculty have fled the sinking ship at an alarming rate. According to a state Board of Regents report, 94 UI faculty members have resigned. The average ebb and flow of faculty from our university should be around 68.4. This is not good.
As a result, administration is turning to the students to pick up the bill on the slack funding. UI President Bruce Harreld said that if the university were to raise tuition to the median rate of our sister universities, we could be pulling in up to $91 million more annually, a significant number given the context of the $8 million in state funding budget cuts the UI is footing, which will likely turn into a larger number in the next year.
The regents, the same body that sets UI tuition, recently approved an $89.9 million renovation of Kinnick Stadium, which, when completed, will increase seating capacity to 10,234 in the north end zone. There is a degree of irony involved with funneling a vast pool of wealth into a building that serves no academic purpose nor provides anything of worth to most of the faculty, private donations or not.
On the subject of funding, Harreld told the Gazette that “we ought to take a serious look at how to harmonize policies, how to stop the fighting for companies, and jobs, and resources and develop a common long-term plan,” he said. “It’s very important that we all recognize that it’s doable. But I think, quite frankly, on the path we’re on, it’s unlikely that we’ll get there.”
The lack of funding is a problem, and a problem we must face. If you cannot pay your faculty a competitive salary, they will leave. If you cannot provide grad students with benefits and grants, they will study elsewhere. In the present climate of higher education, money is the unfortunate glue that holds us all together. But dipping into undergraduate students’ pockets, again, should not be the solution and is far from a “long-term plan.”
He also mentioned notions of sharing revenue with athletics, which seems like a more efficient and lasting solution. College sports would have no place in the world if it wasn’t for the qualifier that is placed before those sports, college. There is no Kinnick Stadium without Macbride Hall. While academics is floundering for funding, Kinnick gets a makeover? That doesn’t make sense to me.