MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — Vermont has ranked at or near the bottom of the states in public funding for its major research university for decades, and now a national group warns other states are heading in the same direction.
But University of Vermont officials are questioning a key statistic released Tuesday by the National Science Board, saying per-student public funding for UVM by the Legislature might look extra low because it’s being spread out over what’s recently been a fast-growing student body.
The NSB, the governing body of the National Science Foundation and a science advisory panel for the federal government, reported that funding by Vermont had declined 25 percent from 2002 to 2010 when measured on a per-student basis, from $4,653 to $3,482. The latter figure put UVM last among 101 public research universities nationwide in state taxpayer support, the NSB said.
But during approximately the same period, a growth initiative launched by former UVM President Daniel Fogel saw UVM’s undergraduate population grow by more than a third, from 7,601 in 2002 to 10,461 in the fall of last year, according to figures provided by the university.
The NSB painted a different picture when it stripped out the number of students and calculated changes in state funding adjusted for inflation. By that measure, state funding for UVM dropped just 1 percent between 2002 and 2010, the NSB said.
NSB member Ray Bowen, a former president of Texas A&M University, acknowledged that spreading state funding among a larger student body would lower the per-student number “at least in the short term.” But he called per-student funding “a pretty good measure of the state appropriation” and said it “lets you compare across state boundaries.”
Nationally, the NSB said funding for America’s public research universities dropped by 20 percent from 2002 to 2010, when inflation and a 320,000-person increase in the number of students served were factored in. It urged more funding for the schools, saying they are leaders in scientific and technical research and strong engines for economic growth.
Domenico Grasso, vice president for research at UVM and dean of its graduate school, said in an interview the Vermont state government “has limited resources to invest.”
“I think we’ve been very fortunate that over the last several years funding from the state has held constant and that we have not seen cuts” like those imposed in larger states, he said.
Support fell 30 percent or more in 10 states during the period studied, and it fell nearly 50 percent in two states, Colorado and Rhode Island.
UVM, with limited state funding, about $40 million for the last academic year, has adopted a strategy of pursuing out-of-state students, who pay more than $33,600 in tuition, about $20,000 more than the $13,344 in-state students pay. Two-thirds of UVM’s undergraduates are from out of state, making them a key source of financial support for the university.
More worrisome than its state funding, Grasso said, are looming budget cuts to federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes for Health. Federal funding accounts for about 70 percent of the $120 million to $130 million UVM gets in research grants each year, he said.
