Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1946 [PAGE 277]

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274

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

[October 24

T h e budget for 1945-1947 will be one of the most important in the history of the University. At no time has the University been faced with a situation presenting so many problems of such a diverse and complex nature. Only if these problems are faced with courage and progressiveness can the University hope to meet its responsibility to the State, the nation, and especially to the host of returning veterans who will enroll in the University, as well as to hold its place among the nation's leading educational and scientific institutions. T h e fundamental policies for the preparation of this budget are found in "General Principles for the Preparation of Estimates for the 1945-1947 Biennial Budget as approved by the University Council," a copy of which is attached to this memorandum. T h e subjects with which the budget must deal may be summarized under the following heads: 1. Funds required for additions to staff, operating expenses, and equipment to provide for the certain increase in enrollment, including services to veterans; restoration of salaries of staff members now on leave without pay; and increase in Retirement System costs. Preliminary estimates for the first semester of this year were for 5,300 students, including Army and Navy trainees; actual registration at this date is 8,083, thus indicating that enrollment is increasing more rapidly than had been expected. 2. Of equal importance is an increase in academic salaries, which have not kept pace with compensation of other groups on the staff, and for such further salary and wage adjustments of nonacademic employees as may be appropriate and essential. 3. Additions to and replacements of equipment to make up for lack of such items in recent years, and to secure advantage of new developments during the war period. 4. Improvement and expansion of various programs, and the introduction of such new programs as are found to be important to inaugurate at this time. This last item represents more than half of the proposed biennial budget increase. F o r more than a year, a special faculty committee on "Future University P r o g r a m s " has been studying our educational and research activities in all areas. In this study, the Committee has spent many months reviewing and weighing past, present, and projected programs in all divisions of the institution. T h e r e has never before been such a comprehensive survey of these matters as presented in the report of this Committee, which has become the basis for these requests to improve, expand, and inaugurate programs in many areas. T h e budget as presented herewith is the result of estimates of department heads, deans, and directors, a critical analysis of these estimates by the Advisory Committee to the Bureau of Institutional Research, and review by the University Council. It represents a reduction of $3,926,788 in the total sum requested by various departments. F o r the current biennium the total State appropriation to the University for operation was $20,103,646, of which $15,281,924 comes from tax revenues, the remainder being from University income which is deposited in the State treasury, and therefore must be appropriated by the General Assembly before it is available for use. T h e proposed budget would require total appropriations of $30,583,093, of which $24,262,831 would have to come from tax revenues. Through successive biennial periods, ever since a reduced scale of appropriations was established in 1933, the University's biennial requests have been materially reduced, and not until the current biennium did the University receive an appropriation which adequately took care of its needs. Thus there is a vast back-log of accumulated and deferred needs which call for attention now, and if these could have been taken care of in each biennium we would not have to ask for such a large increase at this time. It is my judgment that we should present this budget to the State administration with the facts and conditions relating to it, in order to make it plain to the administration just what is really necessary to place the University in a first class position financially to meet its responsibility and the demands upon it. I realize fully that the requested increases are very large, but so are the demands on the University as it faces the post-war world. This is the last biennial budget for which I will be responsible, and I feel it is my duty to advise the