At Friday’s Board of Regents meeting, the Board is expected to accept a $700K gift of property from donations through the MSU Foundation.
The gifted vacant lot south of the Museum of Art at MSU covers 2.29 acres of land.
University president Jesse Rogers said more than ever, the university is dependent on donors and grants to operate the university.
“We are fortunate that we live in a community with people of means who appreciate the importance of a higher education and who want to develop MSU,” Rogers said.
Rogers said in the last year the university has raised more than $13 million that went into building upgrades, equipment, scholarships, and faculty and student development.
The Board members will also be discussing their concerns involving higher education as a whole, including governance, enrollment and funding challenges.
Rogers said though all of these elements concern him, enrollment and funding are now essentially the same issue.
“As the state has reduced funding over a number of years, universities including MSU have had to pass the cost of a higher education on to the students.”
Since students pay about 43 percent of the university’s operating cost, MSU has become dependent upon healthy enrollment to provide a quality education, Rogers said.
On Friday, administrators will also show the Board their plan on balancing the academic year’s budget.
This year, the budget suffered due to a decline in enrollment, which cut the budget by about $1.7 million.
Rogers said the administrators have a plan that will cover this loss. They will also be discussing a long-term plan regarding the budget.
“The outlook for increased funding is not good and rather than just balance the budget from year to year, we need a long-term plan,” Rogers said. “As they say in Austin and Washington, we can’t just kick this can down the road anymore.”
Fees will also be up for discussion at the Board of Regents meeting.
“We are simply doing a fee switch to get our operating money into the accounts in which we most need funds,” Rogers said. “It should be invisible to students since their cost will not go up.”
The testing feed will be recommended to be adjusted.
“In regards to the testing fee, we are passing on the cost of the tests themselves,” Rogers said. “We have to do this to cover our costs as the costs of tests increase.”
