Rogers: Northern, southern colleges should be funded equally

By Jean Reid Norman

Thursday, June 18, 2009 | 1:59 a.m.

Higher education Chancellor Jim Rogers says UNLV and the College of Southern Nevada should get an extra $68 million over six years to help balance the inequities in funding between the state's northern and southern institutions.

In a memo sent out Tuesday, the outgoing chancellor cites a report by former UNLV President Carol Harter and Gerry Bomotti, the higher education system's vice president for finance and business, that recommends extra funding of $12.7 million for UNLV and $9.6 million for CSN in each of the next three biennia. It recommends another $2.5 million for both schools in the fourth biennium.

The plan would bring UNLV up to 95 percent of UNR's operational funding and CSN to the same operational funding as the Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno by 2019. It sets a goal of bringing capital expenditures in line by 2023.

Rogers points out in the memo that UNLV and the College of Southern Nevada receive only 50 percent of the higher education budget, while Southern Nevada, which has 65 percent of the state's students, provides 75 percent of the funding.

The state needs "a period of time when UNLV is brought up, but UNR is not brought down" in funding, Rogers said. During an interview Wednesday, he pointed to a similar legislative move in California that brought UCLA in line with funding at UC-Berkeley.

Harter said she has been fighting the battle for funding parity in the southern part of the state for years without success, but she hopes that the legislature's Interim Finance Committee will commission another study to look at the issue in the coming year.

A legislative study ordered in 2003 and released in January 2005 showed UNLV and CSN received $1,500 less per full-time student than their northern counterparts.

That number has grown to $2,200 per UNLV full-time student, the new report says, and CSN gets $1,114 per student less than Truckee Meadows Community College and $3,318 per student less than Western Nevada College in Carson City.

"The point is to show that as far back as 2003, legislators acknowledged the inappropriate funding for southern schools and the need for it to be corrected," Harter said. "The current data shows the problem is the same or worse.

"We've been talking about it for years, and nothing has happened, and the difference is dramatic," she said.

In the memo, Rogers says he has the support of Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford and Assembly Majority Leader John Oceguera to study the funding and address it in the 2011 session.

Oceguera said that the Legislative Commission, which he chairs, can commission a study. Even though a bill that would have done so failed to make it out of the 2007 Legislature, he is inclined to push for it, Oceguera said.

The past legislative session, during which Gov. Jim Gibbons proposed a cut of 36 percent for higher education, emphasized the funding inequity between the northern and southern schools, Oceguera said.

"In the past, we had enough money that it wasn't evident," he said.

He added that many of the legislators who created the current funding mechanism for higher education are no longer in the Legislature, so it may be possible to change it.

"We are willing to look at all the aspects of the issue," he said. "The concept of parity between the north and south is a fair one."

Rogers said that even though he is leaving the top higher education job at the end of this month, he will remain engaged in the issue.

"I've been promised, and if they break the promise, I will go very public about it," he said.