Ohio colleges, universities launch new formula

JULIE CARR SMYTH

AP State­house Correspondent

COLUMBUS — Ohio’s pub­lic col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties got a peek Fri­day at how they will fair under a newly forged agree­ment on state fund­ing that encour­ages col­lab­o­ra­tion and empha­sizes stu­dent grad­u­a­tion over enrollment.

State pro­jec­tions indi­cate most insti­tu­tions will receive increases in the first year of Gov. John Kasich’s pro­posed $63.2 bil­lion, two-year bud­get, with 17 of the state’s 61 uni­ver­si­ties, branch cam­puses and com­mu­nity col­leges expected to receive cuts.

State higher edu­ca­tion fund­ing rises over­all in the budget’s first year, about 2 per­cent to $1.78 billion.

State Bud­get Direc­tor Tim Keen said one new ele­ment of the for­mula is that it will be based on aver­age grad­u­a­tion fig­ures over a three-year period, while past set-asides for cer­tain cam­puses are being phased out.

Bruce John­son, pres­i­dent of the Inter-University Coun­cil of Ohio, which rep­re­sents Ohio’s 14 pub­lic four-year uni­ver­si­ties, said the approach car­ries inher­ent risk for the insti­tu­tions but they under­stand that more Ohioans need to get degrees for the state to suc­ceed. The state’s grad­u­a­tion rate is about 25 percent.

“Of course, you want higher rates of grad­u­a­tion because to some degree resources are wasted when a stu­dent attempts to com­plete a degree and fails,” said John­son, Ohio’s for­mer lieu­tenant gov­er­nor and devel­op­ment direc­tor. “But the most impor­tant issue for the state’s econ­omy is that the total num­ber of grad­u­ates goes up.”

Ohio State Uni­ver­sity is pro­jected to receive a 3 per­cent increase under the plan, with three branch cam­puses expe­ri­enc­ing cuts. OSU Pres­i­dent E. Gor­don Gee helped work out the fund­ing deal, which Kasich has praised for its inno­va­tion. Kent State and Cleve­land State would see increases of more than 5 per­cent, Wright State of 3.5 per­cent and oth­ers smaller increases.

Over­all, five uni­ver­si­ties, seven branch cam­puses and five com­mu­nity col­leges are expected to receive cuts.

Bowl­ing Green would see a reduc­tion in state fund­ing of 4.2 per­cent under the new for­mula, with lesser cuts headed to Shawnee State (2.4 per­cent) and Cen­tral State (2.1 per­cent). The uni­ver­si­ties of Akron and Toledo would see cuts of less than 1 percent.

Owens State would face the steep­est cut among com­mu­nity col­leges, a reduc­tion of 3 per­cent, fol­lowed by Rio Grande (2.1 per­cent), Lake­land (1.6 per­cent), Clark State (0.5 per­cent) and Cuya­hoga State (0.4 percent).

Keen said addi­tional money is set aside for com­mu­nity col­leges based on cer­tain “suc­cess points” in edu­ca­tional achieve­ment that are being identified.

“There’s also addi­tional work that’s going to be done on the suc­cess point part of the for­mula, to try to iden­tify other fac­tors that meet the goal of not only grad­u­a­tion but also what is suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion at the two-year sec­tor,” he said. “There’s thought going on at the Board of Regents about stan­dard­ized cer­tifi­cates that stu­dents in the two-year sec­tor might achieve.”

Posted by AP News on Feb 8 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.