The Committee to Study the Funding of Higher Education met April 25 in Las Vegas, where Chancellor Klaich was questioned about a number of features of the proposal he has submitted for consideration.

Some of attendees' questions and comments follow:

• Should an F grade should count as a completion of a course?
• What would be the method used to recognize and help fund research done at the two universities?
• Should O & M funding be integrated into the overall proposal instead of treated separately and outside the formula?
• This appears to be a “one size fits all” approach to costing out courses throughout the System.
• How would cost ratios among disciplines be calculated?
  
• There is a lack of national benchmarks used in the proposed approach. 

Gregory Brown, NFA president, presented a resolution of the UNLV faculty senate. It argued that any restoration for compensation ought to be included directly in campus base budgets, just as reductions in compensation were taken directly from campus base budgets in 2009.

This, Brown noted, would not only be consistent with the practice of other states that have implemented funding formulas based on student outcomes, but would also send an important message to students, assuring them that any restoration of competitive compensation would be based upon additional state allocation, not based – as the Board made clear at its December and January meetings – on student fee increments.

Faculty believe that assuring quality education through recruitment and retention of the best faculty must be paired with a commitment to access and affordability for students. Calculating restoration of salary separately from the formula, they said, supports these two objectives.

The committee also heard a lengthy report by SRI International, the consultancy assisting the committee, concerning how tuition is treated by legislatures around the country. The report revealed what many have suspected, that Nevada is nearly unique in counting tuition collected against what is due to the institutions from the State general fund.

The biggest surprise of the meeting came when Chairman Steven Horsford gained approval to appoint two subcommittees, one charged with looking at how local government contribute to community colleges around the country.

For links to meeting materials, click here.