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Testimony by President Joan R. Leitzel
University of New Hampshire
New Hampshire House of Representatives
Finance Committee
February 21, 1997
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak with you this afternoon about the budget requests from the University. It has been a privilege for me to be at UNH over the last seven months. I bring to New Hampshire a mid-westerner's perspective on the mission of higher education, a disposition to public service and the public value of educational institutions. No university in the country has greater potential to serve the public interest than the University of New Hampshire. UNH has many remarkably strong academic programs, an outstanding faculty, talented and ambitious students, and a dedicated staff. It is positioned at this moment to become a true partner with the state in economic development and in improving the quality of life for all New Hampshire citizens. Increased public investment in the University will provide significant return to New Hampshire's people.
UNH has shown itself capable of generating significant external support and capitalizing on public investments to support its mission. Last year we completed Rudman Hall and the biological sciences complex. Rudman was a partnership between federal and state funding sources. We also completed the addition to and renovation of the Memorial Union Building and built the new Whittemore Center that houses our magnificent arena and recreation facilities. The Memorial Union and the Whittemore Center projects were funded privately from gifts, student fees, and gate revenues. Now we are undertaking the addition and renovation of Dimond Library, which will provide 25% more space for collections and reading areas. Dimond is the academic heart of the campus and the state's only public research library. The funds for this renovation have come solely from the State of New Hampshire. Our single "critical need" request for this biennium is $68,000 in FY98 and $200,000 in FY99 to address the operating costs of this expanded facility.
UNH has earned national academic standing among universities. This year we have welcomed UNH's largest class of new students. We have never served a greater number of qualified New Hampshire students, but we could not serve them so well if we did not also attract capable out-of-state students, whose tuition dollars enable the University to offer a full array of academic programs at every level. Numbers suggest that UNH is now the public university of choice in New England. This fact documents the strong reputation we have achieved.
UNH faculty are competing very well for competitive grants and contracts, bringing to the University and to the State a total of $43,408,288 in FY Œ96. This represents an increase over last year of 5.5% and is the largest total ever from grants and contracts. The University also is exploring expanded alliances with the private sector in those areas where emerging New Hampshire industry and University research programs have the potential to be mutually beneficial. Let me mention in particular the economic and technical benefits that have been experienced by New Hampshire businesses through their association with the Industrial Research Center. Over the last five years, the Center has generated 560 jobs through technical assistant grants, trained 35 New Hampshire companies in a "design of experiments" program and helped over 400 inventors get their ideas patented. In addition, as I know you are aware, UNH is moving ahead in its planning for the entrepreneurial campus which will link emerging technical companies in New Hampshire to University resources.
The University and the University Foundation are working aggressively to increase private giving. Last year private gifts totaled a record $13,114,000. On the strength of recent fund-raising achievements, we intend to undertake a major capital campaign for academic excellence. The University Foundation has undertaken a feasibility study for such a campaign. If we proceed as I expect, I will challenge the State to participate by matching our private fund-raising efforts in certain specific areas.
In spite of our efforts to help ourselves by increasing revenues, the University's current and projected operating budgets present difficult problems. The balance of in-state and out-of-state tuition dollars is precarious, and inflation and budget reductions have taken a heavy toll. This year my administration inherited a budget that includes a shortfall of more than $1 million. After comprehensive budget planning for future years, we are implementing severe permanent reductions in expenditures of 24% in the business operations and 15% in the secretarial and clerical budgets. Through this process we expect to eliminate 50-55 positions. The University is taking similar reductions in its academic and athletic programs.
The last faculty contract at UNH expired July 1, 1995. Negotiations between the faculty and the Board of Trustees have not yet produced a new contract. We had hoped that the factfinder's recommendations would be the basis for an agreement last November, but the faculty rejected those recommendations, and the contract negotiations entered a new phase of mediation. If the factfinder's recommendations had been accepted, they would have raised faculty salaries 4.1% in the first year and 4.75% in the second on an annual basis. These raises would have required the reallocation of the faculty salary base equivalent to twenty faculty positions.
Even at this level, faculty salaries would be slightly below the average of the six New England public land-grant universities. In the other five New England states over the last two years, state appropriations have increased from 3% in Vermont to 13% in Connecticut. Thus, we expect that competing with the other New England land-grant universities in the area of faculty salaries will be a major challenge for UNH, and salary increases at our peer institutions for FY97 and FY98 will likely be above the 3% and 3.5% salary increases proposed to the New Hampshire legislature by the University System.
In addition to these comments on salaries, I would like to comment briefly on three other areas of critical University need.
Financial Aid. In order to attract highly-qualified students, both in-state and out-of-state, we must offer competitive financial aid packages. It has been the tradition of the University to admit students on the basis of academic readiness and not use financial need as a factor in deciding admissibility. We observe that the percent of our students qualifying for University aid has increased over the last two years from 27.7% to 32.2%. As a consequence, in the current fiscal year, we are using approximately 23% of our tuition dollars for financial aid.
Library Acquisitions. The Library acquisition budget at UNH has not kept up with library budgets at other research universities. A critical problem has been the inflation rate of research journals in excess of 10% each year over the last decade, as well as the exchange rate of the U. S. dollar against European currencies. Because of the importance of current research journals to the work of our faculty and students, we now spend 82% of our Library acquisition budget on research journals, leaving only 18% of a much-too-small budget for the purchase of books, monographs, and electronic data bases. UNH's library is a major state resource. It is the only public research library in New Hampshire. More than 17% of the materials circulated last year by UNH's library were borrowed by citizens not affiliated with the University. Almost every public library in the state borrowed from the University's library. In addition, the state's public schools, colleges, businesses, state agencies, and hospitals are dependent on this library. We must find ways to increase this investment.
Technology to Support Learning. Although this year's budget request does not directly ask for funds for information technology, this is an area of great need at the University and will be a high priority for the campus for several years. Our past budgets have adequately addressed computing needs for administrative use, but support for teaching and learning information technology has been underfunded for many years. As a result UNH is eight to ten years behind comparable institutions and faces one-time expenditures at the level of $5.3 million and annual support expenditures of $1.7 million beyond our currently budgeted amounts.
The Business and Industry Association report on expanding economic opportunities in New Hampshire emphasizes the importance of strengthening education, building a telecommunications infrastructure across the state, and investing in UNH as a "premier research university." UNH is positioned to play a major role in the future of this state. Our research and outreach programs are in areas critically important to the state: environmental technology, marine science, advanced materials, communication technology, health care delivery, children and families, disabilities, teacher education, land use, sustainable living, public policy research, small business management, entrepreneurship, theater and the arts. In addition, a statewide telecommunications infrastructure and an electronic library to serve the state's industry and the state's citizens will be anchored at the University.
UNH has the capacity to drive a knowledge-based economy in New Hampshire. Further, the University can take a leading role in connecting higher education across the state and in providing articulation with K-12, so that students can move efficiently through all levels of education. I see bright prospects for renewed collaboration between the State of New Hampshire and its public university. It gives me great personal pleasure to represent those prospects to you.
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