Planning and Budget Advisory Council

Meeting summaries

May 1, 2019

Chancellor John M. Dunn opened the spring semester meeting of the Chancellor’s Planning and Budget Advisory Council with remarks on a number of topics, touching on the funding for higher education in Illinois, the SIU budget, enrollment, and other matters. Some of his main points were:

• Illinois has always been a large exporter of high school students. When Chancellor Dunn was at Western Michigan University, he was 2 hours and 10 minutes from downtown Chicago. Families who were unhappy with higher education support in Illinois were looking for other options in Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, Iowa and elsewhere.
• Negative news impacts enrollment. The first message Chancellor Dunn sent out was about retention. SIU needs to keep the students who are here and need to make sure that all of us are reaching out to make sure all students are served well, not only in classrooms. It is personal.
• We have always been a friendly campus, but we must work harder. A greeting from one of us can make a difference.
• What are the growth areas in the country? The Midwest and Mideast are struggling with the number of high school graduates, so we are all competing for a smaller pool. We are a research university and need to attract students from California, Texas, Arizona and other states.

Chancellor Dunn described ongoing recruitment initiatives including open houses in Chicago, meetings with high school guidance counselors, and meetings with regional community college staff.

Council members were invited to comment and ask questions. Topics included regular annual salary increases for faculty and staff, employee morale issues, appropriate levels of decision making for the campus, and the need for additional resources to attract and retain faculty.

Judy Marshall, Vice Chancellor for Administration and Finance, provided updates:

• Springfield update – There are five weeks to finish the fiscal year 2020 budgets. The Governor’s budget in February recommended a 5 percent increase for higher education, which would be $4.6 million for the Carbondale campus. The revenue to support an increase does not appear to be there. There are a number of taxes being proposed to increase revenue, including changes to individual tax rates, and new sources of revenue are being considered, such as recreational marijuana and sports betting. The budget should be complete by the end of the month.
• Minimum wage - The minimum wage increase that has been approved will cost the campus about $332,000 in fiscal year 2020, and $6.9 million annually at full implementation in fiscal year 2025.
• Fiscal year 2020 - Planning has been underway for the fiscal year 2020 budget. SIU is planning for a flat appropriation, or the same amount received this fiscal year. Tuition revenue is expected to decrease. We waived $42 million in tuition revenue in fiscal year 2018. The new AIM High grant will provide $500,000 in new scholarship funding and additional MAP funding has been proposed in the state budget. Both of those will help reduce the amount of tuition waivers. An updated five-year comparison of state revenues and expenses was distributed.

Graduate tuition rates – A proposal to assess all domestic graduate students in-state tuition rates was discussed. The committee asked for data on which programs are enrolling tuition paying students. The data will be provided to the committee in advance of the next meeting.