HOUGHTON--Dr. Fred Dobney, executive vice president and provost of Michigan Technological University, presented the university's Board of Control March 20 with a five-year budget plan designed to shape MTU into one of the nation's premier engineering and science universities.
The draft budget, which includes an average salary increase of 26.6 percent for University employees through 2002-03, has as its goal to attract and retain the top-quality faculty who form the basis for excellence in education and research. It calls for adding an additional 14 tenure-track faculty positions in the next five years, and anticipates a revenue increase of approximately $27 million, from $86.3 million in fiscal year 1997-98 to $113.6 million in 2002-03.
"We are poised to make another leap forward similar to what we have done in the last five years," Dobney said. "If this institution is going to become what it has the capacity to be, we have to make this investment in our faculty."
Board of Control Chair James Mitchell elaborated. Michigan Tech, once one of a very few schools in the state to offer an engineering program, is now one among many. If it is to distinguish itself again, the University will have to choose a new direction.
"We must decide that either we are going to be a less-expensive version of one of a number of run-of-the-mill technical engineering schools, or we are going to provide the resources necessary to become one of the premier engineering, science, and technology universities in the world," Mitchell said.
"Our professors earn on an average 10 percent less than they could be earning at peer universities," he added. "A recent report shows that our full professors are earning $14,000 less on average than those at the University of Michigan. . . . Year in and year out, we cannot expect to continue attracting the brightest and best minds by paying 10 percent less than everyone else."
One of the University's primary weaknesses is the size of its endowment, at $26 million about $4,000 per student. Among MTU' peer institutions, Georgia Tech's endowment per student is $59,000, at Lehigh University it is $97,250, and at the Colorado School of Mines it is $23,668.
"Our endowment is woefully inadequate to support student scholarships, student research, faculty support initiatives, enhanced faculty salaries for attracting lead professors, and a cushion for difficult times," Mitchell said.
Thus, the Michigan Tech Fund Board of Trustees, which oversees the University's endowment, hasagreed to raise $100 million to fund a variety of initiatives that will enhance the quality of education and research at Michigan Tech, Mitchell said.
In addition, the five-year budget plan calls for revising Michigan Tech's tuition schedule. Currently, all Michigan resident undergraduates are charged at the same rate. Since it is substantially more expensive to educateupper-division (junior and senior) students, the plan proposes that they be charged progressively more, until in 2002-03 their annual tuition would be $5,486, approximately 10 percent higher than the 2002-03 lower-division rate of $4,986. Currently, all resident undergrads pay an annual tuition of $3,936. Over the same five-year period, tuition would be increased for resident graduate students from the current $3,276 to $5,426.
The increases are expected to bring MTU tuition to within a few hundred dollars of that of Michigan State University and approximately $2,000 less than the University of Michigan.
The tuition increases should not prevent any Michigan students from attending Michigan Tech, Mitchell said. He noted that MTU has an unusually generous financial-aid program; MTU graduates rank 16th from the bottom among the 229 national universities in terms of debt load, and in 1996 47 percent graduated with no debt at all.
Michigan Tech has a choice, Mitchell said: to continue to be a cheaper alternative to other good engineering schools, or to become a world-class university. He encouraged his fellow Board of Control members to support the latter course. By supporting the University's five-year budget plan, "We can empower and encourage those who will make this an exciting and invigorating university for generations of students to come," he said.