State funding down

_____ A UHSEU/TSEU analysis of funding trends for Texas’ university health science centers and medical centers shows that state funding as a share of total budgets is down over 30%, and that the institutions are trying to fill the gaps with fees paid by students and patients. One casualty is staff and faculty compensation. The administration at the UT Health Science at San Antonio has identified compensation for faculty and staff as its most crucial budget issue for 2007. A UTHSCSA report prepared for legislative budget hearings notes that salaries at UTHSCSA “are lagging below national and local levels.”
_____ The Texas Legislature did not include university system employees in statewide pay raises for other state employees in 2005 or 2007, after including these employees for the previous 20 years or more. Basic funding for universities was not significantly increased after inflation is taken into account.
_____ The table breaks out broad categories for funding inputs, and shows the trend in the portion of overall budgets covered by appropriated state funding (General Revenue, or “GR”). The apparent sudden decrease in GR Dedicated (mostly student tuition and fees) from 2002 – 2005 to 2006 – 2009 is due to changes in accounting and reporting by the institutions. It appears that some components that were included in GR Dedicated before 2006 were moved to “Other” after that. We are gathering additional data to make a definite analysis possible.

Found in the Sept 2007 issue of: