State budgeters dole out less for Metro

By Perry Swanson
The Metropolitan

When the Board of Trustees of the State Colleges in Colorado dishes out money to the colleges, Metro is next to  last in line.

Compared to the other three state colleges, Metro nets the least amount of money from the combination of tuition and state funds per full-time student, said officials from Metroâs Budget Office.

Metro gets less than the other state colleges because it is the biggest state college and serves 60 percent of the student population for the state colleges, said Dottie Lewis, budget director at the State Colleges in Colorado.

She said every school has to offer services, such as financial aid and admissions offices, to their students. But it costs smaller colleges more per  full-time student to offer those services because they donât have a large number of students to contribute tuition dollars.

About 60 percent of the state collegesâ funding comes from the legislature. The rest comes from tuition.

Lewis said Metro is financially better off because it increased tuition by 4 percent last year.

When Metro first proposed the increase, Metro President Sheila Kaplan asked the board not to consider the tuition increase when it allocated state funds.

A tuition increase would typically precipitate a decrease in state funds. But the board agreed to hold off for a couple of years,which resulted in more state money for Metro.

Next year, the board of trustees could decrease Metroâs funding.
Sean Brailey, vice president of Administration and Finance for the Student Government Assembly, said the state collegeâs policy discriminates against Metro students. Brailey said heâs studying the issue to see how the problem might be solved.

ãThereâs an obvious unfairness,ä Brailey said. ãThe whole formula does need to be modified so that Metro gets more of a fair share.ä

Metro student government  President Karmin Trujillo agreed.
ãWe feel students and faculty are being neglected due to the disproportionate funding from the Board of Trustees,ä Trujillo said in a speech at Metroâs convocation this year.

ãWe need to move to a fair funding allocation for (Metro). We need to stop complaining and take action.ä

Western State College in Gunnison gets the least state funding ($2,602 per full-time student each year). Metro receives $2,878 in state funds, Mesa State College in Grand Junction gets $3,006, and Adams State College in Alamosa gets $3,835.

However, Western got 68 percent of its tuition from non-resident students who pay much more than residents.

The combination of tuition and state funds netted Western $5,790 for each full-time student last academic year.

Jerry Boswell, a Metro professor and chairman of the Faculty Senate Budget Committee, said Metroâs lower rate of funding translates to lower-quality teaching because the college canât pay adequate salaries and attract top-quality professors.

ãWe canât offer the level of educational services we need to offer,ä Boswell said. ãWeâre constantly strapped in terms of the basic teaching materials ãThe students are the ones that ultimately end up as the major losers because of the lack of funding.ä

When the state colleges created the funding formula in 1995, Kaplan was an outspoken opponent of it.

But Kaplanâs sentiment was ãnot well-receivedä said Metro spokeswoman Sherry Patten. Now, Kaplan wonât comment on the funding disparity, Patten said, because such criticism is perceived as disloyal.

ãYou need to ask them (officials at the state colleges) whether or not they see (the plan) as fair, because you wonât hear it from us,ä Patten said.