March 12, 2019 | UHCL Staff
Asking for money is easy. Demonstrating to state legislators how state funding—or a lack thereof—affects crucial programs in a university is more of a challenge. On Feb. 19, a delegation from University of Houston-Clear Lake traveled to the Texas State Capitol in Austin for UH-Clear Lake’s Day at the Capitol to do just that. The Day at the Capitol is a biennial event in which faculty, administrators and students can advocate in person with state lawmakers for legislation to expand funding to their university.
UHCL’s Vice President of Administration and Finance Mark Denney was among the administrators in the delegation who spoke with Rep. Larry Taylor, Sen. Angela Paxton and Rep. Greg Bonnen. “We had two or three key elements we were advocating for funding,” Denney said. “One is the formula-based funding, which we have actually lost. We get so many dollars per semester credit hour that students take classes, and that’s the primary source of funding from the state for our education and general operations.”
When state funding was cut last year, the remainder was divided up and came to about $55 a credit hour, where it had previously been about $62 a credit hour. “One of the objectives for our trip to Austin was to ask for that funding to be restored at least to $62 a credit hour. Although that does not keep up with inflation, it would still be an improvement,” Denney said. “The state says our enrollment keeps going up so keeping it at $62 is too much, but when they reduced it, despite our significant cost reducing actions, the University was required to transfer those costs to the tuition we get from our students. Our goal is always to keep our tuition affordable, but all our cost increases now have to go on tuition. Students have to make it up because the state is not able to keep up with their end of the deal.”
Denney said the second objective for the trip was to discuss tuition revenue bonds. “These are bonds that the state sells, then pays the bonds back through their general fund,” he said. “This is how we got the money for our new STEM and Classroom Building. The state of Texas paid for that, and they’ll own it when it’s paid off. We didn’t need to charge our students to pay for that building.”
The university’s new Recreation and Wellness Center, Denney pointed out, is considered an auxiliary building and the bonds for it are paid for through the student recreation fee. “We don’t charge a building fee for an academic building because the state is supposed to pay for those,” he said.
“We are asking the state for bonds to build STEM Building number two,” Denney continued. “It was supposed to be twice the size that it is, but we had to settle for half the size that we needed. We came to tell our lawmakers to believe us when we say we need the other half. We are having double digit growth in our undergraduate STEM programs and to accommodate them, we’ll need the space.”
It’s a great investment for the community, he added. “STEM students graduate with good paying jobs and tend to stay local, which means they contribute to Texas’ economy,” he said. “We asked them to pass the bond, allow us to build the building to serve our student demand and fuel our economy with quality UHCL graduates.”
Discussing non-formula funding with state legislators was Denney’s third goal for the trip. “That is money we get from the state for specific programs and can’t spend the money on anything else,” he said. “We are asking the state to protect these funds because we fear they might be cut, because that’s what happened in the last biennium.”
The funds were restored, he said, but with “temporary funding.” Denney said that “temporary funding” was just that—temporary. “Funding could go away and cuts could be real,” he said. “If they take away those dollars, we still have the need to support our programs and our community. If we won’t have dedicated dollars, we’ll either have to cut those programs or raise tuition.”
In the last five years, UHCL’s primary program was its downward expansion, during which freshman and sophomore-level classes were offered for the first time in the university’s history. “We can’t choose to not provide support to those students because we are getting more of them,” Denney said. “We use those downward expansion dollars to keep getting more students and supporting them.”
In time, it won’t be necessary to receive those funds for the university’s downward expansion initiative because the tuition money they generate will suffice. “For now, cutting those funds makes achieving our goals with downward expansion a challenge, and that does not serve the state or the community,” he said. “The population in this area is increasing, and the state couldn’t meet the demand for college with existing facilities, which is why we implemented the downward expansion. Cutting funds would cause students to go elsewhere or not get to pursue their goals at all, which would not serve our community or the State.”
The state’s position, Denney explained, is that other universities also received funding for downward expansion, some as far back as 30 years ago—and were still receiving funds for it. “UHCL thinks 10 years is an appropriate timeline to draw down our funding for this, not four years, which is what the state has done.”
The bottom line is simply that if that state does not protect the university’s funding, students can only be served through raising tuition costs. “The Texas economy is projected to continue growing through the next biennium. It’s not likely they’ll cut these funds in this biennium, but they might in the next,” he said. “If higher education is a priority, then we want our lawmakers to protect our funding. But this biennium, the state says public education is its priority. I think that’s why the funding from the last biennium was temporary—because it’s easy to drop and we are not satisfied with that because of how it will impact our students.”
