The Mississippi Legislature is considering a budget that could possibly increase tuition costs or lead students to look for more private assistance when paying for college.
The state is experiencing a $950 million decrease in available funds this year. This means the Legislature must cut back funding in certain areas. But the cuts that will be made are still unclear, MSU President Charles Lee said.
“Part of the problem is we don’t know what’s going to happen,” Lee said.
High schools, community colleges and public universities are competing for state funding, but it is only causing the problem to grow, Stennis Institute of Government director Marty Wiseman said.
“Education ought to be the goal of anyone in this state,” he said.
Gov. Haley Barbour has said since he was elected that there will be no tax increase to generate the necessary revenue, but Wiseman said this might be more of a problem than relief for taxpayers.
“Will it be better for your parents to pay $100 per year than $300 or $400 per year?” Wiseman said.
Increasing taxes would affect more than two million people rather than placing the burden only on those who have students attending college. But this is just one option for the legislature, Wiseman said.
The legislature has made certain suggestions as to how the state should deal with funding public universities with the current budget problem.
“Their recommendations will result in us losing 15 percent of our state funds,” Lee said.
This percentage figures to about $23 million. This problem has no simple solutions at the moment.
The state assists with more than half of the costs for students’ tuition, but this has been decreasing in recent years. The loss of state funding would call for a 20 percent increase in tuition, and this increase would make the university less accessible to students.
The university must have a certain amount of funds, because the cost of higher education has been increasing every year, Student Association President Adam Telle said.
Telle is from Alabama. He said he never saw a reason to live here before coming to MSU, but now he feels like Mississippi is his home. Some students don’t feel this way, though.
“The more students have to pay for their education out of their own pockets, the less they feel indebted to the State of Mississippi,” Telle said.
If the funding is reduced or taken away, tuition costs will increase for the second consecutive year. The cost will be placed increasingly on students.
“Therefore, public education, which is about producing leaders of this state, will become more privatized,” Telle said.
“Tuition increases are just not the solution here,” Lee said.
Most of the university’s current budget is dedicated to faculty and staff salaries. If the state budget reduces its public university funding, MSU will have to reduce its current faculty and staff.
Telle went with two other students, Anna Little and Simon Bailey, to Jackson Tuesday to speak with key figures and legislators involved with the budget. The three were appealing on the behalf of students.
“We haven’t heard a whole lot about higher education,” Telle said, referring to legislators and the budget.
Lee also visited Jackson Tuesday to persuade legislators to consider higher education when drawing up the new budget. The actual figures of the budget will not be available until the end of the session later this month, Lee said.
The university is also concentrating on reducing the amount of energy it consumes.
“We also realize how important it is for us to be as efficient as possible,” Lee said.
Energy consumption of electricity and especially natural gas has been increasing, and the university must find ways to reduce these cost factors. One new policy will reduce the number of employees for whom the university pays their cellular phone bills, Lee said.