UNLV still short on cash

Wednesday, Oct. 13, 1999 | 10:56 a.m.

Student growth at UNLV is still outpacing the ability of the school to pay for it, despite an extra $1.9 million the 1999 Legislature gave the school for the next two years.

The UNLV budget approved by the 1999 Legislature, which covers the next two years, grew by 10 percent over the 1997 budget. The number of full-time and part-time students at the university has grown 10.4 percent in the same period.

However, the school's full-time equivalency count -- a more accurate measure of the teaching demands that calculates how many students the university would have if they were all full time -- grew 13.3 percent in those two years. That's forcing continued austerity at the state's largest university, UNLV officials say.

The latest budget is $253.3 million, compared with the 1997-99 biennium budget of $230.3 million. Systemwide, the 1999-2001 higher education budget is $894.3 million compared with $777.7 million for the last two-year period, an increase of 15 percent.

Juanita Fain, the university's vice president of enrollment, said the unofficial full-time equivalency enrollment for the fall semester is 16,373, compared with similar enrollment of 14,447 in 1997. Those numbers will become official on Friday, she said.

There was a 5.7 percent increase in full-time equivalency enrollment over last year, when the number was 15,317. There was a 5 percent gain in actual number of students over last year, to an unofficial total enrollment of 22,382.

The more than 3 percent discrepancy between growth and funding, which comes at a time when the Board of Regents and the state Legislature are grappling with the issue of equity in funding, is forcing UNLV to cut back on services and to do without additional personnel in such areas as the new $50 million library.

Regent Steve Sisolak, who has lead the equity funding fight since being elected to the Board of Regents last November, said the discrepancy illustrates the shortfall UNLV is being forced to live with.

"The growth is exceeding our funding," he said.

Sisolak said his constituents are asking how the Legislature and Regents can fund such things as a new dental school when the funding equity issue has not been resolved.

"Because we got a commitment from the Legislature to address the equity," Sisolak said. "Equity will be a major thing in us formulating our budget that we will submit to the Legislature.

"My No. 1 priority is to fix the inequity."

On Oct. 27 an equity funding committee created by the 1999 Legislature will hold its first meeting in Carson City to determine the extent of the disparity in funding between UNLV and the University of Nevada, Reno and among the state's four community colleges.

Sisolak and Regents Doug Seastrand and Jill Derby, chairwoman of the board, are on the committee along with a number of state senators and Assembly members.

A study commissioned by the regents earlier this year said funding of UNR exceeded funding of UNLV by $534 per student.

The problem, said George Scaduto, interim vice president of finance at UNLV, is the Legislature is playing catch-up after years of a funding disparity that was a result of an out-of-date funding formula that was not designed for Southern Nevada's rapid growth.

The Legislature also created a funding formula committee to come up with a new formula for allocating higher education dollars by the 2001 Legislature.

The need for a new formula is felt most sharply through the budgeting biennial process. For example, UNLV's budget request for the current biennium was $328.3 million. The Legislature approved $247.6 million.

"None of our enhancements were funded," Scaduto said.

A first step toward funding equity was taken when the regents, with approval from the Legislature, earmarked some of the money from the estate tax to be used in the next two years to even out the inequities among the campuses.

The estate tax is Nevada's share of a federal inheritance tax. Interest from funds created by the tax are divided evenly between secondary and higher education.

The Legislature gave UNLV $3.7 million from the tax over the biennium -- or about $1.9 million per year.

The money will be split among research ($194,795 per year), academic support ($169,278), library support ($720,911), disability resource center ($143,913), academic computing ($448,416), public safety ($171,386) and unallocated funds ($14,116) to cover such things as merit increases.

Sisolak says the problem with using the estate tax is that it is a one-time fix, as the Legislature apportioned the money only for the current biennium. Scaduto says the university would like to see the Legislature include that amount in future sessions as well.

"Our hope is to get the equity funding in our base budget next time and that the Higher Education Funding Committee will come up with a new formula," Scaduto said.

Meanwhile, UNLV must cope with a less-than-sufficient budget increase that will create longer lines on campus, delays in some processing of information and even a loss of hundreds of magazine subscriptions at the new Lied Library, which is scheduled to open in January.

Scaduto said the $50 million Lied Library suffered one of the severest blows.

About $2.6 million was requested for library support, which includes the hiring of additional people. It received approval for $1.4 million.

"That was a bare-bones request," Scaduto said. "We asked for about 60 (new) employees and wound up with about 15. We're going to have a building twice the size of the one we have now with one-quarter the number of personnel we requested."

Kenneth Marks, dean of libraries, said there currently are 85 staff members, including faculty and nonfaculty employees, such as security people and people to work the circulation desk.

Marks said he has been funded for 11 new nonfaculty employees, one professor and one faculty member.

"We will be able to operate, but we won't be able to get done all the things we need to get done," he said. "Some materials may not be prepared as quickly, there may be some lines at some of the service desks."

Marks said the Legislature's failure to increase the acquisitions budget is the most damaging part of the economic crunch.

"This last year we canceled 717 magazine titles with a value of $513,000 so we could keep our acquisitions budget balanced," he said. "There has been no increase for the current or next fiscal year."

He said the acquisitions budget is a problem with all academic libraries in this and most other states.

Marks said library acquisition budgets have faced double-digit inflation for the past 20 years.

"With magazine and journal prices increasing 11 percent to 15 percent per year, we're in a continual bind," he said.

Marks said the academic publications are important for faculty and students so they can keep up to date on developments in their various studies.

Among the more than 700 magazines and journals that have been canceled is "Advances in Financial Planning and Forecasting," which saves about $95 per year.

Cancellation of "Chemico-Biological Interactions" is saving $1,912 per year.

Marks said with no increase in its acquisitions budget, the library is not able to take full advantage of the resources available on the Internet.

"The provost and president of the university have been very, very supportive of us, but this acquisition budget is completely out of their hands," Marks said.

While the library faces its problems, students may have to bear some of the brunt of the tight budget. The Board of Regents plans to vote on a proposed fee of $4 per credit hour to pay for computer labs.

The technical fee would add roughly $60 per semester to the costs for the average full-time student taking 15 hours.

"This is an important issue because we didn't get our technical funding," Scaduto said.

Another significant budget hit was for equipment.

"In the last biennium we received $5.2 million in equipment funding and $800,000 this year. That's a significant loss," Scaduto said.

The bottom line is that every office will have to serve more students with the same number of employees.

Scaduto doesn't know what the impact will be on the budget when the governor's Millennium Scholarship kicks off next year, a program that guarantees every Nevada high school graduate with a B average a full scholarship.

"It will pay for student tuition, but tuition is not the full cost," he said. "The registration fees represent only 19 percent of our total budget."

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