Regents to talk pay 1st

Of the four operating budget priorities headed to the Utah Board of Regents for consideration, faculty pay at colleges has risen to the top.

"Utah has always been on the lower end of the salary scale," said Commissioner of Higher Education Cecelia Foxley.

And for the past three years the Legislature has not been able to fund salary increases at the higher education level. Colleges have had to use tuition revenues for any increases in pay.

The concern among administrators and faculty leaders at Utah's nine public colleges and universities is that they are losing professors to states where the pay is better.

Faculty salary and compensation and three other funding priorities are recommendations to regents from the commissioner's office. Regents will decide in their meeting Friday to keep or alter those priorities before they're forwarded to the governor and legislators.

Second in line is finding money for 10,500 unfunded full-time students, who account for a $41.6 million budget shortfall divided among the nine schools combined.

Because the state, burdened by a sour economy of late, hasn't been able to fund new student growth, colleges have had to dip into their own budgets and cut or halt expansion of course offerings. That presents an access problem for students.

Another result of not funding enrollment growth is that the number of adjunct/part-time faculty continues to rise, which means students have fewer available resources for advisement and schools have a harder time revising curriculum.

"Across the board we need money for more full-time faculty to accommodate these number of students who have been unfunded," Foxley said.

Colleges rely on state funds for rising fuel and power costs and to maintain their facilities, and that is the third priority for the Utah System of Higher Education.

Last on the list of priorities is a jambalaya of requests, dubbed, "Factors Driving Additional Needs." They're led by a call to fund expanded nursing and engineering programs to address a shortage of graduates in both fields.

In a meeting this past week among legislators, regents and institutional leaders, the Utah Nursing Leadership Forum put in a request for $6.5 million in state funds to train more nurses and hire more faculty to teach them.