State asked to help on higher-ed pay

Increased enrollment coupled with tight fiscal years has shifted the burden of faculty salaries more heavily onto student shoulders in the past five years.

Higher education officials want to curb that trend, however, by asking the Legislature to cover 75 percent of new salary increases and cap funding from tuition at 25 percent. That move would halt the growing portion of faculty salaries paid by students, which has increased by 10 percent since 2001, Commissioner of Higher Education Rich Kendell said.

Currently, tuition pays an average of about 35 percent of those compensation packages, while the state kicks in about 65 percent at Utah's 10 public colleges and universities. Kendell will make his case for shifting that ratio in favor of students at today's Legislative Higher Education Appropriations meeting.

The student tuition portion of faculty pay was averaging 25 percent in 2001, Kendell noted, but has grown at individual universities. At Utah Valley State College, for example, student tuition now covers more than half of employee compensation.

"It forces a higher tuition price on the students, and we've pushed up considerably in the last while," Board of Regents Chairman Nolan Karras said. "We have been willing to face that music, but in fairness there ought to be a different approach."

Setting a 25 percent limit could save Utah college students about $1 million for every 1 percent increase in faculty salaries, according to the Utah System of Higher Education. With a likely 4 percent increase in faculty salaries this year, that could add up to big savings for students and could stave off another tuition increase, Karras said.

Limiting the amount of tuition that goes towards school salaries will also bring the public institutions in line with each other, Karras added. Students at UVSC now pay a much higher portion of faculty compensation than students at Snow, who only pay about 20 percent.

"Over time what has happened at a place like UVSC is they're now 50/50. If a professor gets a $100 raise, it's 50 percent paid by the state and 50 percent paid by students," Kendell. " Every time we do salary increases, that inequity continues to widen."

Salt Lake Community College and Weber State University students are also paying higher percentages of their professors' wages with about 40 percent of compensation funding coming from tuition.