The Oakland Post had the opportunity to sit down with Oakland University President Gary Russi Friday to talk about the upcoming budget, developing engineering building, parking and the university’s branding efforts.

This is the first part in a two-part series highlighting Russi’s views on what is going on in and around campus.

 

OP: What is happening with next year’s budget? Will there be another increase, or will it remain the same?

Russi:  The budget process starts in December and we do a number of forecasts. We look at enrollment, cash flow, costs and what the potential will be for state funding. We try to finalize them in late March. We are constantly looking at the variables to determine what they will be.

The key for us is what the governor does. The governor came out in February with his budget recommendation.

This year, he did not cut higher education.

He put in a pool of money … of three percent … for higher education. That three percent increase is based on a formula. The formula includes first the number of graduates from the institution … they go back and do multi-year rolling average, and for each graduate increase that you’ve seen over the last years, we get $17,000 per graduate.

The number of students enrolled that’s the second piece to this, (that is) $235 a student.

What I like about this piece of the formula is that it begins to say ‘you know what, people who do not have the money or people who have need are important to higher education into the state.’ It deals with the question of access. That’s important for all of us.

The third variable is what they (Snyder) call ‘critical degree.’ Basically, is it STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) research. What they are trying to promote is the idea that STEM degrees are really critical in economic development.

They believe in supporting, seeing new business (get) started, small business starts and job creation.

The fourth piece of this formula is really interesting. Is it what tuition will be next year? Kind of. They didn’t do it by looking at the history — they looked at next year’s number.

They said you would get money if we keep tuition increase below four percent.

All of the boards around the state have to be working with administration on what percentage increases will be. It’s an attempt to mitigate tuition increases at  the state level.

 

OP: What do you think about students parking on the hill in P1? 

Russi: We are going to take those hills out and add parking. That’s where some of the spaces will be built.

 

OP: How is the progress of the Human Health Building going?

Russi: It’s great. It’s on time and certainly in the budget … we plan to open that in the fall. We will have two key events to invite the community, legislators, donors and students to this. One will be the opening and the other will be the ground breaking for the engineering building.

 

Contact campus editor Steph Preweda via email at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @stephsocool