By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
President Mary Ellen Mazey apologized for being the bearer of bad news to the Bowling Green State University Faculty Senate, Tuesday. A storm front is approaching the university from Columbus, and though Mazey said she hopes the worse effects could be forestalled, she knows it won’t be easy.
“We have our work cut out for us” she said of the state budget.
Gov. John Kasich’s proposal calls for a 1-percent increase in state support in the first year of the biennial budget and no increase in the second. This would be paired with a freeze on tuition and freeze.
Now it’s up to the House to fashion its proposal.
Mazey said the state’s university presidents were focusing on three areas as the House begins working on the higher education budget.
Mazey seemed confident that a proposal that would shift the cost of buying textbooks from students to the university was fading. “I think we’re making progress,” she said.
The proposal to have university pay for textbooks in exchange for levying a new $300 annual fee “does not seem to be getting a lot of traction in the House,” she said.
The governor’s plan, Mazey said, is not academically sound. Also the financing was not adequately researched. It would not benefit all students and would create a new bureaucracy to administer.
The state’s university provosts have shaped an alternative policy that would require universities to submit a plan to reduce textbook costs by fall, 2018.
In the meantime university officials would gather the data needed to formulate that plan.
The plans would involve hiring professional negotiators to deal with textbook publishers. The plans could also require professors to consider the costs of textbooks, standardize the texts used in some “gateway” first year courses, use digital sources where possible, develop more open source materials, and use consortiums to identify the least expensive texts.
This plan, Mazey said, is in line with the charge given by the governor’s task force on affordability, which was then overridden by the proposal to have universities pay for textbooks.
Mazey said the university presidents are urging a greater increase in the budget. A 2-percent increase would be in line with the consumer price index, and “if the governor wants to freeze tuition we need 4 percent.” That’s what universities got in the last biennium budget which also had a tuition freeze. “This may be difficult to get in this budget,” she said.
That 1-percent increase, $39.7 million, could be earmarked to benefit student scholarships. What the presidents are concerned about is that it will go into a broader scholarship pool where the money would be spent on scholarships for private institutions as well.
The presidents, she said, are also opposing a freeze on tuition and fees. “We believe the governor appoints our boards, and they have fiduciary responsibility for those institutions. Those decisions should be left to those boards.”
Still, she conceded, “the tuition freeze is pretty much reality.”
One hope is that institutions that did not raise their tuition and fees as much as allowed within the past five years would be able to raise them now. That may be of some assistance financially for BGSU, Mazey said. BGSU froze tuition three years ago.
Another proposal would allow levying a $10 charge on every credit hour.
She also warned that a member of the House from suburban Akron is considering submitting legislation that would forbid the hiring of any more tenured or tenure-track professors.
That’s something, the university presidents oppose, Mazey said, expressing hope that language in the collective bargaining agreement would prevent it.
“It’s a very different legislature,” she said.
On a positive note Mazey said enrollment for next fall remains strong. That would be a benefit to the university’s budget.
She said that one of the best ways to encourage prospective students to make a decision is to be contacted by a faculty member. She urged faculty if they know of prospective students to contact them to encourage them to enroll at BGSU.
