Most states are moving away from allocating public colleges’ money based entirely on enrollment and toward rewarding them according to benchmarks for access and completion. A proposal to do that in Iowa highlights the difficulties of creating new rewards for some institutions without punishing others.
The governing board for Iowa’s three public universities is considering a new formula that would eventually appropriate about 40 percent of the state money based on criteria like number of degrees awarded and job placement of graduates. The rest would be distributed based on the number of in-state students each institution enrolls.
Supporters of the plan say it will provide more-equitable support for the public universities while encouraging them to focus more on recruiting and retaining students from within the state.
But critics of the proposal say it is a "one size fits all" approach that devalues research and professional degrees and makes no sense in a state where the population of future college students is declining. The draft proposal, to be considered by the full Board of Regents in June, has also spurred complaints of favoritism—and not just because the five-member panel that developed the measure included only one University of Iowa alumnus. If approved, the new formula could strip as much as $60-million in annual appropriations from the University of Iowa to be redistributed to Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa.
Read more at The Chronicle of Higher Education: http://chronicle.com/article/Iowa-Budget-Proposal-May-Spark/146853