Today, University of Minnesota President Eric Kaler presented the University’s fiscal year 2019 supplemental budget request to the Minnesota House Higher Education Finance and Policy Committee.
Below is a statement from President Kaler:
“I am grateful to Representative Barr for chief authoring HF3899 and to members of the committee for considering it.
“Today, I shared with committee members my commitment to keeping higher education accessible to all Minnesotans. I hope Minnesota’s legislators will join me in that commitment by allocating $10 million in recurring funding to the University. Our highest priority is to hold tuition flat for resident undergraduates on all U of M campuses for the coming year—more than 31,000 students.
“A strong partnership between the University and the State is crucial to keeping tuition rates affordable. The University has done our part in this partnership. We are on track to reduce our administrative costs by $90 million, reallocating those funds to our core missions of teaching, research and outreach. Additionally, over the past six years, our resident undergraduates have seen the smallest tuition percentage increases in the past 58 years: an average annual increase of 1% on the Twin Cities campus and 0.4% on all other campuses.
“Our cost reductions will continue, but they cannot cover the full impact of cost increases in the future if we intend to maintain or improve on the level of excellence, affordability and accessibility Minnesotans have come to expect from its land-grant University.”
On Thursday, Brian Burnett, senior vice president of finance and operations at the U of M, will testify to the Minnesota Senate Higher Education Finance and Policy Committee on the the University’s fiscal year 2019 supplemental budget request.
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- Find out more about the University’s 2018 legislative request at government-relations.umn.edu.
- Download a PDF map of the University’s impact across the state.
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