The Iowa Legislature is now turning to budgetary matters. Here are my priorities regarding university funding, which were not clearly conveyed in your story last Friday: First, fund the tuition freeze. Second, provide the resources Iowa State needs to meet our growing enrollments. Third, continue working to restore the funds that were cut because of the Great Recession.

The Board of Regents needs a 1.75 percent increase in state support in order to afford to freeze in-state undergraduate tuition for the third year in a row.  If we do it, next year’s seniors will pay the same tuition as when they were freshmen, a remarkable accomplishment. I am cautiously optimistic we can do that.

Iowa State has seen a dramatic increase in enrollment over the last half dozen years: over 9,000 more students than eight years ago. We need more faculty to teach them, more laboratory and computer resources and thus more funding to give our students the quality education they deserve.

The Great Recession forced budget cuts across state government. We have only begun to restore the lost state funding. The regents universities are still $95 million below where they were before the economy collapsed at the end of the Bush Administration. We still have a lot of work to do.

Should we reexamine from time to time the funding allocations among the three state universities? Should the enrollment of students from Iowa be a key part of that allocation? Yes and yes. The Board of Regents’ “performance-based funding model” has started useful conversations. Those conversations, which have to do with how we divide the funding pie among the three universities, will be far easier and far more likely to succeed if that pie is growing than if it is stagnant. That is why my priority for restoring past budget cuts is consistent with and not in conflict with the Board’s proposal.