The Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education want a piece of Oklahoma’s anticipated $612 million dollar budget increase.
Chancellor Glen Johnson laid out a spending plan for a requested $101.5 million increase Wednesday at Northeastern State University's Broken Arrow campus. Several higher education leaders and around two dozen state lawmakers were present.
"We think it’s conservative. There have been requests for as much as $1.4 billion and $400 million in new money. Ours is $100 million. It’s tied to degree completion, it saves students and parents money, it shortens the time to degree, and it delivers on our opportunity to provide a higher-ed system that meets the needs of our students," said OSRHE Chancellor Glen Johnson.
The regents want to use $38.7 million to give more than 6,700 full-time faculty 7.5 percent raises. They would put $50.5 million toward the first year of a six-year, $274.5 million plan to bring operations funding back to pre-recession levels. That would include hiring more professors, restoring courses and catching up on maintenance cut in previous years as the state budget fell short again and again.
The other $12.3 million would cover concurrent enrollment needs and undo cuts to several scholarship programs, including an incentive for science and math teachers.
Johnson said that all ties into raising Oklahoma’s degree completion rate.
"Sixty-seven percent of the jobs in this state will require some college or an associate’s degree. Thirty-seven percent of the jobs will require an associate’s degree, a bachelor’s degree or more," Johnson said. "So, we’re in a knowledge-based economy, and, certainly, if we’re going to be competitive, we’ve got to provide additional college degree holders to meet those job needs."
"I think it’s a very good plan. There’s no doubt all these things are needed," said Sen. Dewayne Pemberton, who chairs the Education Subcommittee on Appropriations. "There’s 58 other agencies across the state, so we’re going to have to make sure that the funding that we have can be spread out. But I’m hoping that we can get as much into education as possible."
The regents' full budget request is $878.2 million, which would be their highest appropriation in four years but not back to pre-recession levels.
Since the 2008 recession, Oklahoma's higher education budget has been cut almost $275 million, or 26 percent, despite a small increase from fiscal year 2018 to fiscal year 2019.
