Iowa has had a long and proud history of quality education in the state. But a change in the Board of Regents funding model is needed to continue this tradition of educating Iowans. A new proposed funding model will support schools that educate Iowans, those who live and work in the state, just as it should be.

Iowa should be investing its resources in the universities that educate in-state students. This will encourage schools to recruit, educate and graduate those people who will stay and work in Iowa after their degrees are finished.

The Board of Regents recently compiled the Performance-based Revenue Model Task Force to determine the best possible way of funding the three regent universities in Iowa. The task force proposed a funding model — which recommends that 60 percent of the General Educate Fund be allocated based on the number of resident enrollment at each school — will not only be a positive change for students from Iowa, but for Iowa State University as a whole.

The regents are hoping to change its current base-plus funding model. This current funding model uses last year’s allocations to each university’s general education fund and “seeks additional funding to address increased costs related to salary and other inflationary increases,” according to the task force’s report.

This model has led to often unfair and unbalanced funding for the three state universities. According to the task force’s proposal, in the fall of 2013, Iowa State received only 63 percent of the funding Iowa received for each resident student. University of Northern Iowa received only 59 percent of Iowa’s total for each resident student.

Broken down into dollar amounts, Iowa State got $8,765 from the General Education Fund for each resident student. Northern Iowa only received $8,229, while Iowa — which has decreasing resident enrollment — got $13,966 for each in-state student. Put simply, the new funding model should have the opposite effect.

This model is set up to reward schools with the most undergraduate resident enrollment. One of the biggest priorities for the task force was increasing the number of college graduates in Iowa from the three public universities.

This new model might negatively affect a school like Iowa while it has positive effects for both Iowa State and Northern Iowa which are the schools with increasing undergraduate resident enrollment. According to the proposal, Iowa’s resident enrollment has decreased almost 16 percent — more than 3,000 students across all programs — since 1981 to the fall of 2013. Northern Iowa’s has increased slightly (262 students) while Iowa State’s has increased 13 percent (2,241 students).

While this new funding model may hurt the University of Iowa — which fills almost half of its student body with non-resident enrollees — in the short term, it will help the state of Iowa, its economy and its three public universities in the long run. The more resources the state of Iowa can invest in its own students, the better off the state will be.

In the long run, this will encourage the universities to educate students from Iowa who are planning to stay, live and work in Iowa in the future. These students stay in Iowa more often than the out-of-state students who come here just for the education and move away after.

In the short term, this model will get much-needed funding to the schools that need it the most. The total cost of an undergraduate education in Iowa is not fully covered by undergraduate tuition while it is required that non-resident tuition cover the full cost of an education.

So it only makes sense that the most funding should go to the schools with the biggest number of in-state students and fewest out-of-state students. This will encourage Iowa schools to invest its time and resources in educating Iowans.

The decisions the board is making are important because what we need to be focused on is the students who will be graduating from Iowa schools and getting Iowa jobs. Therefore, schools that have invested in educating those who will live and work in Iowa even after their education is complete should be supported fully. The new funding model is nothing to be afraid of; in fact, it may be exactly what the students need.