The $9.75 million increase, if approved by the state legislature, enables Towson to enroll about 1,000 new students in the fall. It will significantly speed up the pace of the University's anticipated growth, leading the chairman of the Board of Regents to suggest that TU could enroll as many undergraduates as College Park (25,000) in five to seven years.
At an election-year press conference at University of Maryland College Park on Jan. 3, Ehrlich, the incumbent candidate, announced a $117.2 million funding increase for the University System of Maryland, a 14.5 percent increase from the year before.
He said that meeting enrollment demands â€" "not just needs but demands" â€" was his top higher education priority.
As part of a system-wide "enrollment growth initiative," the governor's budget recommends that Towson receive funding for an additional 800 Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) students.
Because not every student takes a full-time course load, the enrollment increase will translate to about 1,000 additional bodies on campus in fall 2006.
"We're going to be growing by 1,000 next year. We're negotiating what the levels will be after that. We're going to be 21,000 in a handful of years," President Robert Caret said.
In speeches to faculty members, administrators, and alums this month, Caret has used the words "exceptional," "unprecedented" and "unbelievable" to describe the funding.
"We expected a good budget. We did not expect this budget," he said at the Faculty Conference on Jan. 11.
Then he added a caveat "in case any legislators or journalists" were in the room: "We need the damn money!"
"We are not living high on the hog," he said. "This will get us to a point where we can actually start to do things in a way that we should have been able to do them all along."
The state will provide Towson with about $5,500 for each of the 800 FTE's, exceeding the University's request for a funding increase. Several months ago, Towson told the university system that it was willing to grow, but only with appropriate funding. In the fall of 2005, TU received about $4,450 per FTE, Caret said.
Because a significant increase in enrollment would create a fiscal strain on the campus, Caret asked the board to fund the new growth at the $5,000 FTE level and play catch-up with the rest of the student body, gradually increasing the subsidy the University receives to $5,000 per FTE over five years.
But Ehrlich's higher education funding increase virtually eliminates the catch-up.
"If you take the total increase in general funds- and add to it the tuition revenue we expect, that total, divided by the FTE students expected in 2006-07 (approximately 15,000 to 15,300) would give us over $5,000 per FTE for all students," Caret explained.
"We thought it would take several years to get there, so we're very pleased."
Board of Regents chairman David Nevins, a Towson alum and an ally of Caret's, said the growth initiative was the most important part of Ehrlich's announcement.
"We are finally gaining the dollars to be able to grow the capacity of our public institutions in the state of Maryland," he said. "I think today's budget announcement, provided the state legislature continues with its support, will guarantee that we can grow this system by thousands of new seats."
Funds for the growth initiative, totaling $15 million, are also expected to assist Salisbury University, University of Baltimore and University of Maryland Baltimore County.
The 14.5 percent overall increase in funding was significantly higher than the 7 percent general increase and a 2 percent increase for enrollment growth that Chancellor Brit Kirwan had publicly proposed.
"I predict that we'll be the highest percentage increase for public higher education in the nation, and it brings the system state funding to the highest point in its history," Kirwan said.
The new monies will adjust the funding balance between what the state pays in the form of a subsidy and what the student pays in the form of tuition and fees.
In recent years, tuition has increased at a faster rate than the subsidy, so the state has been paying for a smaller portion of each student's education. The latest budget, if approved by the legislature, will shift a little bit of the burden away from the student. USM vice chancellor for administration and finance Joe Vivona called it "the right trend."
Despite the positive budget forecast, the Board of Regents decided to raise tuition and fees at a meeting in Towson on Jan. 6. Tuition will increase 4.5 percent for in-state students in the fall of 2006.
But "the state dollar amount per student is increasing by more than the tuition and fee increase per student," Vivona noted.
In fiscal year 2006, the state allotted $62,908,312 to Towson University.
In fiscal year 2007, the governor is recommending an increase of $9.75 million, bringing the total to $72,658,012.
Mandatory costs like employee health insurance, deferred maintenance, utilities, and general inflation will account for about half of the new money, Provost James Brennan said at the Faculty Conference.
"But we will still have a considerable amount to invest in enhanced and expanded programs," he said, including 28 new tenure tracks for next year.
The allocation also includes $250,000 to prepare for the University's capital campaign, which launches this fall.
The state legislature must approve the state budget by the end of its 90-day session in Annapolis. "The first phase of our budget is to beg the governor to put the money in the budget," Caret said. "The second phase is to beg the legislature to leave it there."
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