“Indiana” University’s funding problem

It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to realize that student debt and decreasing state funding of IU are serious concerns for Hoosiers.

The former is not helped by repeated tuition increases and the latter is plummeting.

Recession-driven financial constraints explain the recent acceleration in falling state support for IU, but this alone does not explain the overall trend in decreasing state funding.

In all fairness, IU’s tuition increases have remained below the national average and in-state tuition — currently set at about $9,000 per year — compares favorably with other Big Ten institutions.

Certainly, all state higher education systems have been squeezed in one way or another by the financial crisis, and Indiana is no different.

But while state funding declined significantly during the last several years, it has been declining for much longer than that, sliding from 50 percent more than 20 years ago to 16 percent today, and projected to fall less than 10 percent in eight years.  

I believe part of the reason state dollars have been so elusive may lie in IU’s success as an increasingly private institution.

IU has been a successful private-sector fundraiser in recent years, and saw a 38 percent increase in grants and contributions — from $247 million to $340 million — between 2009 and 2010.

Revenue generated by non-state and nonstudent sources contribute more than 30 percent of IU’s budget.

Thus as long as IU appears capable of supporting itself through private means, the state sees less reason for sustained or increased funding.

As a supporter of smaller government, I applaud IU’s resourcefulness. However, I also stop and consider what it means for a public institution — established by the people of a state to serve them — to be truly public.

I additionally believe that “brain drain” has contributed to tepid state funding.

According to a January 2012 study conducted by IU, 40 percent of public university students who graduated in 2000 had left the state within five years.

Additionally, 30 percent of IU students are out-of-state and 10 percent are international.

If all graduates continue to leave Indiana at alarmingly high rates, what more incentive is there for Indiana to assist those students?

But tuition increases will surely do the most harm to those in-state students who are least able to pay rather than better-off Hoosiers and out-of-state students.

As has been mentioned in this newspaper, IU’s Chief Financial Officer Neil Theobald admits the structure of IU’s funding — which for the first time in University history makes up the majority of revenue — is unsustainable. 

If the ratio of student-to-state funding is to continue unmitigated, surely student-consumers deserve more than their lone governor-appointed trustee representing their interests to the University’s top decision-makers.

If the state’s share of funding continues to fall, we might be IU in name only.

­— danoconn@indiana.edu