Board approves budget

IU-Bloomington faculty will get an average pay raise of 6.3 percent and IU students will pay 7.5 percent more in tuition under IU's 2001-02 budget, approved by the board of trustees last week.\nThe budget includes $845 million for the Bloomington campus, up 6.2 percent from last year.\nOverall, IU's budget exceeds $2 billion.\nIUB's general fund includes $199 million from the state and $293 million from student fees.\nA response in part to lower-than-usual funding from the state, the tuition hike will primarily fund faculty and staff pay raises and initiatives designed to retain students through graduation.\nIU faculty and assistant professors are among the lowest paid in the Big Ten.\nThe board approved guidelines for the budget, including the tuition hike, at its June 5 meeting. After the guidelines were set, University officials had two weeks to prepare a final budget.\nChief Financial Officer Judy Palmer said the board of trustees provided good guidelines and sufficient money to make its goals happen. But like any budget, she said, putting it together included late nights, working weekends and a lot of stress.\n"Budgets are always a challenge because there are always more priorities than resources," Palmer said. "Decisions have to made across the University about our highest priorities."\nThis year, professor pay was one of the highest of those priorities.\n"This was a budget that had a funded salary policy, one of the best salary policies for the Bloomington campus in many years," Palmer said. "This is a balance between maintaining and enhancing the quality of the programs offered to students and fulfilling the (University's) responsibility."\nAt IUB, 4.5 percent of the tuition hike supports the general fund, and 3 percent funds special new investments including a $650,000 faculty retention fund and a $900,000 fund for retention and diversity initiatives.\nThe average percentage salary increase for 583 recipients of the faculty retention fund is 8.8 percent. Assistant professors will see average increases just more than 8 percent.\nDonald Burke, an assistant professor in the chemistry department, said the pay raise is an action he greets with enthusiasm.\nBurke said the pay raises, along with other factors, could change the tide of losing top faculty to other universities -- a trend that has especially plagued his department.\n"The trustees have shown that an increase in faculty salaries is a priority for them," said Burke, a faculty member for three years. "That's a very positive thing from the point of view of the faculty."\nIU Student Association President Jake Oakman agrees, but said he would prefer if the salary increase would have come a few steps at a time, not all at once.\n"Obviously I'm kind of upset about the tuition increase, but I understand that in order to be competitive, what we pay our faculty must be competitive," Oakman said. "I wish there were other ways of raising the money instead of increasing tuition, but obviously that's not going to happen this year"