Higher education faces lean time in Legislature

Stacy J. Willis

Sunday, Jan. 10, 1999 | 9:22 a.m.

Las Vegas is perhaps not best described as an intellectual haven.

Absent among the carnival lights and porn-pamphlet pushers are the rows of sidewalk cafes where the tender chime of coffee spoons and polite murmur of self-described thinkers is broken up only by the carefully pronounced "Foucault" or "Derrida."

Instead, it is a city where one of the leading visionaries in higher education sits one floor above a mock casino, leans back in a creaking office chair and says, "Let's crassly make a profit off of international students and turn around and use the money to educate Nevadans."

He is Richard Moore, president of the Community College of Southern Nevada, and this month -- the ramp-up month to the legislative session -- he is often found with his hands full of brightly colored bar graphs that show the financial status of the state's higher education system.

"This is Las Vegas. I am exactly like the city of Las Vegas. We won't make it without tourists and their dollars," Moore said. "We've got to do it somehow -- this place is growing -- and if the Legislature won't fund us, we have to do it somehow."

Moore's controversial ("but profitable") soak-the-foreigner idea is one of several money-making alternatives education leaders are looking toward as the state faces what some consider a make-or-break moment for its system of higher education.

The demand on higher education has never been greater in Nevada. Student enrollment continues to grow. More critically, as the population increases and municipal officials plan for the future, they are looking toward the colleges and universities to churn out trained workers, educated professionals and industry-leading researchers who might one day support and encourage a more diversified economy.

Ironically, this may be the first legislative session in years that produces a slim operating budget for the higher education system. Traditionally, Nevada's universities and community colleges have enjoyed comfortable funding from the state, allowing UNLV to offer one of the country's lowest four-year tuition rates. But recent conservative economic forecasts and growing K-12 funding demands are putting the squeeze on the higher education system's share of the state's general fund.

In 1997, the Legislature approved a 29.1 percent increase in the operating budget for the university system. For the 1999-2001 period, the college system submitted a $1.1 billion spending plan -- a 45 percent increase over current spending -- to handle the expected 6 percent growth in enrollment each year, a 4 percent pay raise for faculty each year and the start of a dental school at UNLV.

In the request, UNLV was ticketed for $336.2 million, a 48.5 percent increase. The Community College of Southern Nevada would receive $172.3 million, a 70 percent increase.

Now Moore and UNLV President Carol Harter, among other education leaders, are watching as their billion-dollar budget request gets trimmed -- gutted -- at the governor's budget office this week, before the Legislature even sees it. Although the governor's final recommendation is not yet firm, executive office budget officials report that it has been cut significantly.

Never mind school enhancements, salary increases, support services, luxuries. Don Hadaway, deputy director of the Nevada State Budget Office, said the college system will be lucky to get partial funding for growth.

"I'm sure (the leaders in higher education) are going to be disappointed. You could classify their budget now as lean and mean," Hadaway said, "particularly in relation to the generous budgets they received in 1995 and 1997.

"There are two distinct issues: What their growth is going to be, and what the state's ability is to fund it," Hadaway said.

Educators' request for funding for a projected 6 percent growth in enrollment had last week been whittled down to 2 percent by executive office budgeteers.

"If we don't get growth funding, it's the same as getting a budget cut," Harter said. "We simply have to get funded for growth."

In the last four years, CCSN's full-time student load increased from 7,000 to 13,100 -- but many more attend the school part time, bringing the total number of students up to about 30,000.

Similarly, UNLV is projecting 900 new students next year and is aiming to change the character and reputation of the university from small-town commuter school to "premier urban research university."

"They're one of the most rapidly growing education systems in the U.S.," Hadaway said. "But we have to balance the budget."

Laying the foundation

Vegas as intellectual haven. Vegas as mecca for the highbrow, philosophical set. Vegas as scientific research hot spot.

In many ways, Moore and Harter are being called upon to lay the foundation for a modern educational system as Nevada comes of age. They and policymakers statewide are grappling with the questions:

* Do we want UNLV to be a research university, chock full of professional programs and advanced research projects? And if so, what happens to undergraduate education?

* Do we need a state college -- perhaps in Henderson -- to focus on four-year undergraduate education?

* What role does the university play in assuaging the K-12 system's problems, especially the need for qualified teachers?

* In Las Vegas, a city still dominated by gambling resorts, should the community college and the university focus on training Strip workers? Or should they take a more active role in developing a science or computer-trained work force in order to help lure other industries and diversify the Las Vegas economy?

With the answers to all of those questions lying in wait, the state has the most basic question still to answer: How is it going to pay for any of this?

"Nevada law mandates that we fund K-12 before the college system," Hadaway said. "University funding is discretionary -- there is nothing in the statute that says we have to fund a university system."

In fact, it is anticipated that K-12 will get the largest chunk of the general fund, some $1.14 billion. The K-12 enrollment is expected to grow by 30,000 students over the next two years, funded at a rate of more than $3,000 per student plus other expenses, according to statutory funding formulas.

The second-largest draw on the general fund will be the state's personnel expenses, totalling about $731 million. The University and Community College System of Nevada (UCCSN) is currently pegged at $614 million, the third-largest chunk, followed by the prison system, Hadaway said.

"There are other priorities out there; we have K-12 and prisons -- the universities are in that squeeze," Hadaway said.

"It's not that the state doesn't have the money -- we do have the money -- it's that we don't use it right," Moore said.

"There is a lot of money going to prisons, for example. Their campuses cost more than our campuses. Take that money away from prisons -- get the nonviolent ones out of prison, find a way to put them on house arrest or something else. Figure it out," Moore said.

Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani, D-Las Vegas, said that the root of the problem is not a lack of money, but a system of funding formulas that needs to be revised.

Still, Giunchigliani, who is a K-12 teacher and sits on the Ways and Means Committee that will have to approve the budget, said some lawmakers believe UNLV's vigorous focus on growth is unchecked and perhaps not in the students' best interest.

"It does no good to be a flagship if there is nothing in the shell," Giunchigliani said. "The university has to do a better job of not creating new programs when they haven't finished adequately funding existing programs. ... I did not support the creation of the law school -- we hadn't finished funding the architecture and engineering schools."

Gov. Kenny Guinn is considered a longtime supporter of education, but when he served as interim president at UNLV, he left a legacy of cutting excess spending.

"Gov. Guinn has expressed concerned over our (state) resources," Hadaway said. "He's realistic enough to know that we have to prioritize."

Once the governor's budget is complete, it will be submitted to the Legislature for debate, changes and final approval.

A legislative strategy

Cards are held close to the vest and generous bluffing makes its way around the table before the legislative session begins.

No one claims to have any extra money to give, bleak predictions are made and all the while cool eyes look toward the end of the session, when it is likely that the spring economic forecast will loosen the coffers and money will come jingling out for the interests that have held their ground throughout the session.

Until then, however, different strategies are being developed.

In lieu of new dollars, UCCSN officials may ask the Legislature for the freedom to spend their limited dollars however they see fit, instead of being tied to earmarked funds.

"We anticipate that we will end up serving more students than 2 percent," Suzanne Ernst, UCCSN external-relations officer, said. "So we're asking that they consider giving us more flexibility, so that if we're going to serve more people than we're funded for we have the ability to move money around.

"This is really an open-enrollment system -- you don't have to have a B-minus average to get in. We have a responsibility to serve all Nevadans who want to go to school. We understand the state's problems with money, so if they can't give us more money, maybe they can give us more flexibility.

"But not everyone is comfortable giving up control."

Tom Anderes, UCCSN vice chancellor of finance and administration, said higher education may ask the Legislature to reconsider its funding formulas and deliver the money in a lump sum.

"That way, it's up to institutional prerogative. Each institution would be held accountable for their spending but would have flexibility -- if they wanted to spend it on academics or support services or whatever," Anderes said.

"Particularly in times of growth, we should have that flexibility," Anderes said. "But as much as flexibility will help individual institutions apply money where it is needed most, it's not like it opens all sorts of funding avenues."

Giunchigliani supports the idea of revising the decade-old funding formulas -- to alleviate an age-old issue about a possible inequity between funding of Northern Nevada's colleges and universities and Southern Nevada's.

"It won't happen inside one legislative session. But that's what needs to be done -- we have fundamental problems with our funding formulas," she said.

Alternative routes

The search for immediate alternative funding avenues, or budgeting strategies, is left to the creative power of the administrators. Moore has employed several methods for combatting a tight budget at CCSN and has several more ideas in the works.

One method he championed for cutting capital spending was to share facilities and computers with high schools. Another plan Moore embraced is the program for international students, in which he sends college officials to foreign countries to recruit students who pay higher tuition than in-state students. Nonresidents pay $20 more per credit hour and an additional $1,919 per semester.

The program, which he said will produce a $700,000 profit this year, has been criticized for bringing Vegas-style marketing to education. Critics also have questioned whether the international students are given enough help adjusting to Las Vegas once they arrive or whether they are simply recruited, charged and left to their own devices.

"There's no loser here," Moore said. "CCSN students will know more about the world from sitting next to someone from Korea, and I will make a profit off of them and educate Nevadans.

"Santa Claus is not paying for this college, so I'm charging people from around the world and making a profit off of them. Santa Claus is the international students.

"I didn't force them to come here from Korea or wherever. If they can't get into the University of Tokyo, then their choice is somewhere else in the world. There are 100,000 international students in America, and we are an equally good choice compared to San Francisco City College or Pima Community College in Tucson (Ariz.)."

Moore sees the international students as a necessary funding avenue given the tight budget recommendations.

"My job is to find a way to make it happen without breaking the state," Moore said. "The Legislature won't do it, so I have to find a way."

Student fees do not escape the money crunch -- the Board of Regents last year boosted student fees by nearly 4 percent for each of the next two years. University Chancellor Richard Jarvis says they are still low compared to those of similar schools.

Harter said that in addition to state revenue dollars and tuition, she will be looking toward private donations to beef up the school's budget.

"Last year we raised $28 million in private funds," Harter said. "We will continue to do that. I do that on a daily basis."

Giunchigliani said that private fundraising needs to be kept in check.

"If you have a public institution, then the public should fund it, not private interests," she said. "Part of the decay of the California system was when they began depending too much on private funding."

Moore and Harter plan to meet with Southern Nevada lawmakers this week to discuss their goals in the legislative session.

"It's too early to comment on how this will play out," Harter said. "But I'm still hopeful."

archive