Curators yet to select new system president
Published June 6, 2007
Although the UM system Board of Curators meetings held May 31 and June 1 did not produce a new president to command the university system, issues including teacher salaries and tuition rates did meet discussion from curators.
Interim UM system President Gordon Lamb, in an address to the curators, proposed two possible methods of securing the necessary funds to raise compensation for ranked faculty positions.
MU Faculty Council Chairman Rex Campbell said the salaries of some faculty positions are not competitive with that of other institutions.
"We're losing a lot of good people," Campbell said.
Both methods proposed by Lamb would derive money from an "efficiencies" pool approved by the curators in April to raise funds for a salary increase.
The pool draws from a 1 percent reduction in the operating budgets of each of the UM system's four campuses.
The pool would siphon $4.2 million from MU's operating budget.One method would match funds from the pool with funds from state appropriations and tuition revenue; the other would equally split fund from the pool and state appropriations.
Campbell said both methods are "painful," and both will cause additional costs -the first method for students and the second for institutions. He said the second method, while not raising tuition, would still have negative effects for students because institutions would be forced to make budget cuts, resulting in larger class sizes and a reduction in student services.
"The curators have to realize that efficiency can only go so far," Campbell said.
UM system spokesman Scott Charton said a decision has yet to be made by the curators on how to better compensate UM faculty and will be subject to further deliberation.
A total of $21.6 million designated for teachers' salary increases was included in the curators' current draft of their request for state appropriations for 2009, which was discussed at the meeting.
According to the request, the UM system would ask for a 4 percent increase in state appropriation, bringing total appropriations to $115 million.
Also discussed through the course of the meeting were new ways to evaluate employee health costs to reduce liability for the university, new rules from the state legislature that require Missouri institutions to provide measures of performance, the delegation of contracts for capital improvement projects on the MU campus and the UM system operating budget for 2008.
Net revenues for the $2.3 billion budget include the 3.8 percent raise in tuition approved by the board in April.
Missouri Students Association President Rachel Anderson said the meeting focused chiefly on issues regarding faculty and external affairs that might not have any direct consequences for MU students.
"At face value, that can seem boring," Anderson said.
Anderson said issues discussed at the meeting, such as state appropriations to higher education and the search for the new system president, might be more relevant to MU students.
"That's something that's really going to affect them," Anderson said about the presidential search. "That's really important for students to pay attention to. That can drastically change what goes on at Mizzou."
Anderson said students should be concerned with issues regarding state funding for higher education because tuition rates could hang in the balance.