The FY 2012 House Ways & Means budget proposes:
- $818 million in direct appropriations to the state’s campuses of public higher education. Of this total, $418 million is for UMass, $192 million is for State Universities, and $208 million is for Community Colleges. Additionally, the HWM proposal projects a total of $17.2 million in out-of-state tuition retention for all of these campuses combined. After adjusting for newly retained out-of-state tuition, this proposal is about $60 million below current FY 2011 funding levels.
- While not identical, the HWM proposal for higher education campuses is very similar to the Governor’s FY 2012 budget. Some of the differences between the HWM and the Governor’s FY 2012 campus proposals have to do with the fact that updated tuition retention data was available in time for the HWM budget, but not the Governor’s.
- $86.5 million for the State scholarship Program, which is a cut of $3.0 million from the current FY 2011 budget. The FY 2011 budget does include, however, $3.0 million in federal recovery money that is not available for FY 2012, so the HWM proposal of $86.5 million represents level funding of the state’s appropriation, narrowly defined, which is how the HWM budget describes this proposal. The HWM proposal is $1.8 million below the Governor’s FY 2012 proposal.
PHENOM is working with the Public Higher Education Caucus to file and support amendments to this budget. Stay tuned.