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by Joe Sullivan

For years, or is it decades, Tennessee governors and legislators have been paying lip service to the proposition that higher education needs to become a higher priority in this state. Yet when push comes to shove in Nashville, our public colleges and universities always seem to end up getting the short end of the stick.

As burgeoning TennCare costs and court-mandated increases for everything from public school (K-12) funding equalization to prisons and mental retardation have taken precedence, higher ed funding has dropped from around 17 percent of state revenues through most of the 1980’s to 11 percent this year.

Now, for the first time in several years, elected officials are concluding their budget work for the year with a surplus rather than a squeeze. In a resurgent economy, revenues have exceeded projections by $93 million in the current fiscal year, and Gov. Phil Bredesen is projecting a $120 surplus for the fiscal year ahead. Key legislators insist this $213 total will rise to nearly $250 million, and the Legislature seems bent on spending every penny of it.

How they do so provides an acid test of whether higher education really stacks up any higher on their priority list. As Metro Pulse went to press on Wednesday, the final returns weren’t in, and there were variables that could affect the test results. But to the extent that higher ed ends up faring any better, it may be only because it’s pulled along by other more potent pressures.

Bredesen, for his part, has only allotted the same-old, same-old 11 percent to higher ed in his recommendation for spending an additional $197 million. That takes the form of a $21 million increase in the $94 million included in his original budget for new facilities. The extra money would go to reduce the percentage of their cost that institutions would have to match on their own in order to get state funds.

But Bredesen didn’t recommend restoring the 1 percent, $13 million cut in higher ed operating funds imposed by his original budget. Nor did he lift a stipulation that schools of higher learning would have to assume the $24 million cost of a 2 percent pay raise that the state would cover for all other state employees, including public school teachers.

Despite the fact that these constraints have left UT and others in a budgetary bind, even after an anticipated 9 percent tuition increase, legislators aren’t about to ease them either.

“They’ve agreed to assume it, so we’d be silly to give it back,” says Rep. Harry Tindell. To which Sen. Ben Atchley adds, “State employees can only look to the state for a raise, whereas universities have other sources of funds.” If these two Knox legislators, both of whom I hold in high esteem and both of whom attended UT, aren’t prepared to go to bat for universities, then who is?

The $24 million that could have covered their pay raises appears destined to go instead for a 1 percent bonus to all state employees that would include higher ed (but not public school teachers). Such a bonus would be on top of the 1 percent bonus Bredesen provided in his original budget. Beyond that, legislators are likely to provide an additional 2 percent pay raise on the same footing that would take effect next Jan. 1, contingent on state revenues exceeding projections by the $24 million needed to cover it. But these boosts are driven by pressures to do more for state employees generally, not by the plight of higher ed.

Other competing claimants for the state’s nest egg include local governments, which are seeking restoration of the $36 million in cuts to their funding that Bredesen imposed last year. (That would mean $1.8 million to the city of Knoxville and $1.3 million to Knox County.) At the same time, there’s a movement underway to eliminate all matching requirements for getting higher ed facilities funding at a further cost of $27 million.

Continued slighting for higher ed couldn’t come at a worse time for the state’s nine four-year universities and 12 community colleges. After a decade of static enrollment that has mitigated the damage done by prior year funding cuts, enrollments are expected to surge over the next several years. The Tennessee Higher Education Commission projects a 6,000 increase to 201,000 students this coming fall and further growth to 215,000 by the end of the decade. And that’s just based on demographics, before even taking into account the impact of lottery scholarships that could push it much higher.

Yet THEC officials are anything but sanguine about prospects for increased higher ed funding in the years ahead. “There could be more money for faculties and perhaps for research, but we’re not planning on any increase in operating funds,” says THEC’s director of academic affairs, Brian Noland.

UT’s interim president Joe Johnson takes vigorous exception to this prognosis. “We’ve got to get more operating funding that’s badly needed to hire more faculty and fill positions we’ve had to let go,” he asserts.

Bredesen has repeatedly acknowledged that higher ed is hurting for more resources. And he has pledged to start providing them once rampant growth in TennCare costs has been constrained by the reforms that have been a hallmark of his administration. But it’s unclear how long it will take to rein in TennCare by how much, whereas it’s very clear that there will be many other competing claimants for any money that’s freed up.

Bredesen has been an outstanding governor in many ways. But his failure to allocate more of this year’s surplus to higher ed does not bode well for the future.

May 20, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 21 © 2004 Metro Pulse