A message from the President

[Darth Snow]

Received this in my email today. Important parts Bolded. Anyone got the details on the 2011 legislation?

In the Colorado General Assembly's legislative session that concluded a few weeks ago, CU sustained a $46 million cut, which will bring our state funding for Fiscal Year 2011-12 to $146 million. This continues an unfortunate trend of declining state funding. We calculate that when factoring in inflation and enrollment growth, we should receive some $326 million annually.

But rather than bemoan the lack of state funding, CU has chosen instead to focus on pursuing legislation that will allow us to operate more efficiently and effectively.

This does not mean state funding challenges are immaterial. Higher education appropriations in Colorado have plunged significantly in recent years, leaving us 48th nationally in state funding per resident student. Our legislators and the governor fully understand and appreciate the value of research universities such as ours. They support us in many ways, knowing that we produce a highly skilled work force, contribute nearly $6.5 billion to Colorado's economy annually, lead research innovation that improves lives (while also creating and attracting businesses), and advance the economy, health and culture of our state and beyond.

Due to conflicting state constitutional provisions and the bad economy, there is simply no available money in the state coffers, leaving higher education to bear the brunt of cuts since it is one of the few discretionary parts of Colorado's budget. But hard economic times often force hard choices that big, complex operations such as ours should make regardless of the economy.

So our approach is to seek the silver lining surrounding the dark funding clouds that marked the 2011 session of the Colorado General Assembly. Our legislative strategy the past three years has been to pursue legislation that allows us to operate more efficiently, engage in better business practices, grow our revenues and leverage our size, buying power and the expertise of our staff and dedicated alumni and volunteers. Our guiding principle has been to ensure accountability while fostering efficiency.

We started modestly in the 2009 legislative session, when we worked with lawmakers to eliminate duplicative and unnecessary steps related to capital construction, which streamlined the process and saved money. We built on that last year with Senate Bill 3 (Higher Education Flexibility Legislation), which among other things allowed us to boost the number of international students – increasing revenue and enhancing our campus environments – and operate under fiscal rules specific to higher education, rather than the limiting one-size-fits-all approach of the state fiscal rules. As a result, we have already seen savings of some $7.5 million in the area of procurement alone.

In the 2011 session, legislators passed House Bill 1301 (Higher Education Efficiency Legislation), a wide-ranging bill that allows us to realize efficiencies in more than 20 areas ranging from construction to operations, from student fees to employee issues. All the measures of the bill combined will add up to significant savings. Examples include streamlining the process for cash-funded building projects, allowing us to offer group benefits plans in lieu of state plans, easing restrictions on indemnification and eliminating redundant data security reporting.

We'll continue to push for funding solutions, but in the meantime, we won't stand idly by. CU will continue to work with lawmakers to help us help ourselves with legislation that enables us to be a more efficient organization. By doing so, we can continue to meet our mission and serve our students and state.

Sincerely,

Bruce Benson
President

 

[sackman]

I think we're getting very close to a point where CU tells the State of Colorado "Thanks, but no thanks" to funding in return for near total autonomy. The State will continue to own the buildings and the real estate, but beyond that will have very little influence. CU is in the midst of a $1.5B capital campaign that will help fund things like scholarships & other operating costs.

Could be the best of both worlds, with any luck.

 

[BuffNut99]

The "employee issues" part has already taken off - CU is moving towards making all employees "at will" (Professional Exempt). "Classified" employees will first be given the option to move to Professional Exempt, and some to most will voluntarily, but all open Classified positions will switch to Exempt. This will save the University alot of money over time for a variety of reasons.