Discordant Voices on Funding UConn: Too Much, Too Little, Too Late

It has reminded some of a food fight in a college cafeteria, with substantially higher stakes but no less rancor.

The University of Connecticut, the state’s flagship higher education institution, is unhappy with the funding level being recommended by the Governor in his proposed budget for the next two years, announced early this month.  University President Radenka Maric said it’s just not enough, and indicated the University may stop playing basketball games in Hartford as a result, among numerous possible repercussions.

In a letter to students immediately after the Governor’s plan was unveiled, which she described as a “call to action,”  the President pointed out that “UConn is Connecticut and Connecticut is UConn,” stating that the governor’s budget would leave the university with a “shortfall of $159.6 million next year and $197.1 million the following year compared to the budget requests” by UConn and UConn Health, outlining a litany of fiscal concerns (and some praise). 

Undergraduate Student Government (USG) leaders had the President’s back instantly, criticizing the Governor in decidedly unfriendly terms – focusing on what student leaders agreed was an insufficient funding level, which they repeated could lead to dramatic increases in tuition, and quickly organizing a student protest at the State Capitol this week.

Next, the student newspaper (Daily Campus) Editorial Board chimed in with this, somewhat different, perspective:

“The Daily Campus Editorial Board is disappointed with the failure of USG to place responsibility on the UConn administration and board of trustees for its financial decisions, and neglecting the fact that it is UConn officials, not the Governor, who have final say on tuition increases.

Furthermore, this rally amounts to UConn convincing students, through thinly-veiled fear mongering, to lobby at the Capitol on the administration’s behalf for more state funding. This effectively gives UConn a blank check to spend however it wants, granting students no guarantee that the administration won’t raise tuition and fees drastically anyway, as it has done for the past half-decade. … USG is uncritically parroting President Maric’s alarmist, manipulative assertion that UConn has no choice but to increase tuition by a destabilizing amount.”

Governor Ned Lamont, apparently compelled to respond to the President and students, sought to set the record straight, issuing a public statement, and a chart:

 “Our budget proposal includes the largest block grant ever proposed for UConn in state history. I am a strong believer in UConn’s contributions to the economic growth of Connecticut, and that is why I’ve proposed increasing the state block grant funding for the university every year since taking office. Our proposal provides UConn with funding to support wage increases and brings pension and retiree health costs onto the General Fund to enhance their competitiveness in obtaining grant funding.”

The statement went on to point out that money received by UConn during the pandemic would not be automatically continued, if at all:

“The COVID-19 federal relief funds were intended to be one-time in nature, providing support during the public health emergency. Those federal dollars were never intended to pay for ongoing expenses. The UConn administration’s insistence that the state continue covering this federal aid now that it is no longer available is not a fiscally sustainable solution.”

It concluded with this:  “UConn must remember they are accountable to the taxpayers of our state and must maintain fiscal controls, like every other part of state government,” pointing out that “UConn receives among the highest levels of state government funding than nearly every other public university in the nation. The university’s fiscal year 2021 appropriations as a percent of core revenues, which pertains to essential education activities and excludes athletics and auxiliary activities, is the sixth highest of the 106 national public Very High Research Institutions as defined by Carnegie Classification.

Which brings up the topic of athletics.  Pre-dating the Governor’s budget address to the legislature by just a few weeks was news that UConn’s athletic department deficit rose to $53 million during the 2022 fiscal year, an increase the school attributed to $13.4 million it was forced to pay former head men's basketball coach Kevin Ollie in a contractual dispute.  The Hartford Courant reported last month that the deficit was covered by a $46.5 million subsidy from the university and $6.5 million in student fees. UConn athletics reported a $43.5-million deficit in 2020, and $47.2 million in 2021, the Courant reported.

“This is one of the largest operating deficits in Division I college sports,” Andrew Zimbalist, longtime professor of economics at Smith College, who has written 24 books, most dealing with the economics of sports, told the Courant in January.

That same week, Hearst CT reported that six years ago, in April 2017, “UConn's senate budgetary committee released a report deriding the school's athletic department finances as ‘unsustainable’ and calling for officials to drastically reduce the department's budget deficit by 2022.

At the State Capitol rally, voices were raised criticizing the state’s level of investment in UConn.  Jeffrey Ogbar, a history professor and president of the faculty union UConn-AAUP, said “Any way you look at it, we’re losing money. We’re not going back to that baseline, we’re going backwards, backwards. It’s a disinvestment any way you look at it,” Ogbar said. “We can’t be flim-flammed, bamboozled, hoodwinked, run amok by a sleight of hand,” CTNewsJunkie reported.

President Maric urged last week that “if you are a Connecticut resident, you can contact your state representative and state senator and ask them to ensure that UConn and UConn Health are fully funded,” noting that the action now shifts to the legislature:  “the Connecticut General Assembly produces its own budget and ultimately negotiates a final budget with the administration.”

The 2023 legislative session is scheduled to conclude on June 7.