Senate ed funding not snobby enough for Mary Sue
See, e.g., Michigan Daily, Senate OKs 3-percent hike in funding: Bill would grant all state universities equal funding boost for next year,
“The state Senate has passed a bill that would grant each of the state’s 15 universities a 3-percent funding increase, a slight boost from the 1-percent increase the University received last year. …
Last month, University President Mary Sue Coleman addressed the Senate Appropriations Committee with Michigan State University President Lou Anna Simon and Wayne State University President Irvin Reid to ask that the three schools be considered separately from the state’s other 12 schools. …
Sen. Liz Brater (D-Ann Arbor), who voted for the funding proposal, said the Senate decided to grant a uniform 3-percent increase because lawmakers had questions about how to calculate some of the incentives Granholm proposed. …
Brater said funding was proposed in one bill rather than two because many of the state’s smaller schools oppose the research corridor’s proposal, claiming it creates a two-tiered education system.
Cheryl Rolland, a spokeswoman for Western Michigan University, said Western supports allocating funds through one bill instead of two because each university makes contributions to the state, and all of them are recovering from budget cuts. …
Last year, the state House of Representatives passed two separate appropriations bills after the Senate passed only one.
The bills went to a conference committee, eventually becoming one bill with two parts that granted separate funding to the research corridor universities. …”
Hm, it looks like my opposition to the two-tier elitist funding system has succeeded, at least partially. (There’s two parts to the bill, unfortunately, but only one bill, thank goodness.)
And I suspect M-Sue should be working on cleaning up her own act re the athletics/academics mess at UM, before she tries to get people to trust her with any more money…