May 26, 2005
Proposed UW budget ‘invests in excellence through our people’
The UW Board of Regents received a budget proposal for the 2005-6 fiscal year that would enable the University to invest in the excellence of its programs, expand opportunity and promote diversity.
The Regents will vote on the budget proposal at the Board’s June 9 meeting.
The proposed Core Education Budget of $633,790,000 would be $51,232,000 higher than the current year. This increase would come from state funding increases of $14,579,000, tuition fee increases of $19,675,000, a Designated Operating Fund increase of $2,238,000, and would use $23 million in local fund balances. The budget assumes that undergraduate resident tuition would rise by 7 percent, the maximum that the state budget signed by the governor.
“We are investing in excellence through our people,” President Mark Emmert said, “by establishing competitive levels of compensation. We are investing in leadership development, to help all our people perform at the highest level. We’re investing in diversity. The budget will increase student access and financial aid. The budget provides for the beginning of comprehensive review of all freshman applications. We will invest in course innovation and undergraduate advising, and also will put added resources into libraries, classrooms and into creating additional sections for bottleneck courses. This was a very good year for the UW in the Legislature, and the public has a right to see a return on its investment.”
The budget provides for 3.2 percent average salary increases for faculty, professional staff, librarians, teaching and research assistants and classified staff. It would also allocate an additional $2 million for retention of senior faculty and $1,500,000 for recruitment and retention of faculty, librarians and professional staff.
Additional funds would support enrollment increases of 180 students in Seattle (of which 140 would be undergraduates) 75 upper division undergraduates at UW Bothell and 100 upper division undergraduates at UW Tacoma. Nearly $1 million in additional financial aid would be available to UW undergraduates, meaning that more than 55 percent of additional need would be met by grants or tuition waivers. Some $483,000 more financial aid would be available for graduate students, as well as an additional $2,836,000 in tuition waivers.
The proposed budget dedicates more than $7 million for investments in program excellence, with allocations to a number of schools and colleges. Specific allocations would be made to help improve the quality of undergraduate education.
An investment of $300,000 would support follow-up proposals from the Diversity Assessment and $85,000 to support a diversity minor in the College of Arts and Sciences.
A total of $23 million would be used for one-time or limited duration commitments. Among them are:
- support for the South Lake Union building;
- funding for the Technology Gap Innovation Fund, which helps bring UW-developed technologies to commercialization;
- renovation of undergraduate chemistry laboratories;
- renovation of classroom space in the Health Sciences complex;
- expansion of the university’s wireless computing capacity;
- replacement and expansion of classroom technology;
- diversity initiatives;
- efforts to transform undergraduate education;
- matching funds for the Faculty/Staff/Retiree Campaign for Students;
- providing additional high demand/bottleneck course sections;
- modifications of central computing to support Civil Service Reform;
- modifications of administrative computing to resolve issues of transferring data to the State Department of Retirement Systems computing;
- support for the Chief Investment Office.
