It’s that time of year when we begin the serious work on next year’s budget.

During the last four budget cycles, all of higher education benefitted from the infusion of COVID-related and other federal funding. Leaders at the state and federal level leveraged those funds to provide capital funding. At Missouri State University, these funds went toward the Blunt Hall expansion and modernization, MoExcels projects and other buildings across campus.

With state revenues down, federal money not as plentiful and a year-over-year decrease in enrollment of continuing degree-seeking, first-year and graduate students, we’re facing a challenging budget year. We’ve experienced this before, so we know the steps we need to take.

As we end the current fiscal year 2025, we’re facing a $3 million shortfall. To address this, we’ve instituted a spending freeze that was spread proportionally across all administrative divisions and academic areas. Some chose to freeze positions that are currently open, and others chose to freeze ongoing expense monies. Either way, we’ve covered the shortfall for 2025.

What does that mean for our fiscal year 2026 budget? First, Gov. Kehoe’s proposed core increase for higher education is 1.5%, which is approximately $1.54 million. However, our payment to MOSERS this year is increasing about $1.75 million, so our starting point is negative $210K. As we begin the budgeting process, we’ll assume a flat year-over-year enrollment with modeling a 4% tuition increase for undergraduate and graduate students.

For compensation, the Executive Budget Committee is evaluating a couple of options:

• A 1% across-the-board increase, where every full-time employee’s salary would increase by 1%.
• A dollar-based increase, where every full-time employee’s salary would increase by the same dollar amount.

The area with potential for a revenue increase is higher enrollment of first-year, transfer, graduate and continuing students. Current projections indicate that fall enrollment may be down slightly if we continue last year’s trajectory.

I’ve challenged all our Administrative Council members to identity steps their teams will take to increase the number of first-year, transfer and graduate students who enroll next fall and increase retention of our existing students. We can all do our part as members of campus – even if it’s providing a friendly face and campus directions to visiting students and their families. Every experience during a campus visit can impact a prospective student’s decision to attend Missouri State.

Positive news about degree legislation

On a bright note, the degree legislation bill that would allow Missouri State to offer terminal degrees, such as PhDs moved out of Senate committee last week, which is great news for us. I testified along with several other supporters of the university. It was a 5-2 favorable vote out of committee, which was very impressive.

I’ll keep you updated on the bill’s progress. In the meantime, thanks to everyone who has worked on this, especially our three Missouri State alums: Tom Strong, who spearheaded the effort, Sen. Lincoln Hough and Rep. Melanie Stinnett.

A longtime leader will retire

Dr. Dennis Lancaster, chancellor of our West Plains campus, announced his retirement effective June 30. He has served in this position since 2021 but has worked on the West Plains campus in multiple capacities for almost 33 years. We’ll miss his leadership.

I spent last Tuesday in West Plains, meeting with members of campus and the community to determine how we’ll move forward in filling his position.

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Thanks for checking in. It’s a great day to be a Bear!

Biff