The Iowa Board of Regents approved the University of Iowa’s fiscal year 2024 $5.34 billion budget at its Aug. 2 meeting.
The UI’s budget includes a $802 million general education operating budget and a $21 million special purpose operating budget. The UI Hospitals & Clinics operating budget is nearly $2.4 billion. The UI’s restricted budget is nearly $2.2 billion.
According to regents documents, tuition revenue covers 63.9% of the $802 million general university education budget. Those funds go to instruction, research, public service, academic support, student services, institutional support, operations and maintenance of plant, and scholarships and fellowships.
In her presentation to the regents, UI President Barbara Wilson highlighted four focuses for the university’s general education funding at the regents meeting.
Increasing the nursing workforce
One priority of the funds is investing in the UI’s nursing program to grow the college and its number of graduates.
“We’re grateful to the legislators and to the governor for the support (and) state investment in our ability to grow,” Ms. Wilson said.
The UI will invest $2.8 million in hiring, retaining and supporting new faculty within the UI College of Nursing. Because of this investment, the university will admit 48 more nursing students annually and hopes to increase the number of nursing students by 30% over the next four years.
The end goal, Ms. Wilson said, is to have 208 students per class by 2026. There were 160 students per class in 2022.
“(It’s) very exciting,” she said. “It won’t manage to deal with all the nursing issues in the state, but between Northern (Iowa and) the University of Iowa, we’re going to contribute our part to growing the nursing workforce.”
Examining student debt
The UI is also increasing student aid in its fiscal year 2024 budget, adding $8.1 million internally. Donor numbers were not discussed at the meeting.
Ms. Wilson said half of UI students graduate debt free but the average debt for the other half is $28,841. The national average is $37,338 per borrower according to the Education Data Initiative.
Facilities management
The university is removing $6.5 million in deferred maintenance from the UI’s 10-year facilities plan. The buildings being demolished are located in the South Quad, structures on Grand Avenue and the Old Laundry Building, totalling 70,000 square feet.
“(We) just want to continue to remind the board that we’e doing our due diligence on deferred maintenance and making sure we’re not adding to our square footage without eliminating some as well,” Ms. Wilson said.
Regent David Barker commented on the demolishing of university buildings, saying it is not the end all solution to the issues.
“I appreciate that you’re eliminating some deferred maintenance, but, of course, demolishing buildings is not the real solution to deferred maintenance,” he said. “The real solution is getting a funding mechanism in place so that we can take care of that deferred maintenance on an ongoing basis.”
Faculty salaries
The university is using $20 million for faculty salary as the UI currently pays less than most Big Ten schools.
The funding will lead to an on average salary increase of 4.2% for the next year. Out of the 11 peer groups counting the UI, Ms. Wilson said the professor salary is eighth and the assistant and associate professor salaries rank tenth.
“We know inflation has been rather high, it’s coming down, but we’re still behind in our salaries,” Ms. Wilson said. “… We’re not where we need to be. We know that. This puts us at risk for retention and recruitment of our faculty away to other institutions, so we have to keep working on our salaries and that’s part of what we’ll do with the coming year’s budget.”
Ms. Wilson also pointed to the High Impact Hiring Initiative that is funded by the university’s public-private partnerships. The program has recruited 20 faculty members and retained nine. The public-private partnership funds totaled $7.5 million in both fiscal years 2023 and 2024.
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