Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 26, 1994 TAG: 9401260213
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The university will have to cut costs by $1.2 million to make up the financial hole that opened over the weekend when Gov. George Allen submitted plans to cement his campaign promise to limit tuition costs to the rate of inflation.
Allen's anticipated amendment is the most recent tremor in the shifting world of The Budget. Still to come is General Assembly action, which includes several amendments the university is promoting, many of them to restore funding lost when former Gov. Douglas Wilder fired the opening salvo before Christmas with his proposed budget.
It will be March before Tech knows what kind of money it will see from the state, Tech Provost Fred Carlisle said Tuesday.
Under Wilder's budget, funds for instructional program would not drop much next year but would go down nearly 8 percent the year after that. At the same time, salaries are mandated to increase 2.25 percent, and the research and extension divisions at the university will lose about $1.5 million over each of the next two years.
"It's a real complicated scenario," said Katherine Johnston, Tech's budget and financial planning director.
The Wilder instructional budget figures were predicated on tuition increases of 5 percent next year and 4 percent the following year for in-state students. Out-of-state students were looking at 8 and 7.5 percent increases.
Allen proposes to keep in-state tuition raises to 3 percent and out-of-state increases to 6 percent. To do that, he is giving colleges and universities $23 million from the state's general fund, but that still leaves a gap for the schools to close.
Allen's plan saves undergraduate Virginians who attend Tech about $66 of their annual $3,300 tuition. Out-of-state students pay about $9,168 and will save $183, said Johnston.
The in-state/out-of-state student body mix also raises another problem - out-of-state students are not coming to Tech in the numbers hoped.
Now 27 percent of the undergraduate student body, out-of-staters subsidize in-state students by shouldering 112 percent of the cost of a degree. In-state students will pay about 60 percent of actual cost next year, up from 55 percent this year. In the late '80s, in-state students paid 37 percent of costs, with the balance paid by the taxpayers.
And that means that however the budget picture shakes out, Tech has to find about $2.2 million this year to make up for all the out-of-state tuitions it was counting on - but never saw.
by CNB