The University of Washington will be more competitive and more accessible, thanks to an 11.6 percent increase in its state funding. The 1991-93 state budget, passed by the legislature and signed by Gov. Booth Gardner June 30, will preserve recent instructional improvements, boost faculty salaries and increase enrollments at the main and branch campuses.
The total amount in the UW’s operating budget will rise to $689 million, compared to $617.S million in the 1989-91 biennium. UW faculty will see an average salary increase of 3.9 percent in each of the next two years.
In addition, a $159.5 million capital budget will fund a new physics building, a new boiler for the UW’s power plant, several major renovations and the cost of designing a new computer science/electrical engineering building.
“The capital budget addresses the most serious constraints that our academic programs face, namely a shortage of adequate space, especially for science and engineering. This will greatly improve our programs,” says Provost Laurel Wilkening.
UW officials are pleased that gains made during previous years—particularly a $50-million increase in undergraduate instruction, minority recruitment and computing—were largely preserved. All units are being asked to reduce their operating budgets by 0.8 percent to cover shortfalls and cost increases.
“Oregon, Michigan, the California system and others are taking some very deep cuts,” notes UW Government Relations Director Bob Edie. “With this new budget, we may have gained some ground against our peers.”
At the beginning of the budget-writing process, the average UW faculty salary was about 11.2 percent behind the goal, which is reaching the 75th percentile of salaries at peer institutions. Since other state budgets are still in flux, it is too early to estimate where the UW stands now.
The UW is also gaining in the number of students who can study here. For the first time since 1979, enrollment during the day will grow. There will be an additional 83 full-time student spaces in each year of the biennium. This new space will be filled at the graduate level, where the state’s enrollment falls the furthest behind its goals.
More space will also expand the UW’s evening degree program, which will have openings for 37 additional full-time undergraduates this fall and again in the fall of 1992.
The UW branch campuses in Tacoma and Bothell also fared well under the new budget. Each will launch undergraduate degree programs in nursing as well as graduate degree programs in education and in engineering. The new programs will begin in the fall of 1992 and are expected to boost the branches’ enrollments.
The UW branches will also share a $31-million capital budget “pool” with WSU branch campuses. “This is a tremendous vote of confidence in the branch campuses by the legislature,” Edie says.
The main campus capital budget will fund a $65-million physics building, designed by award-winning architect Cesar Pelli. About $5.7 million will fund the Olympic Natural Resource Center in Forks.
The results of such favorable budgets will make the UW “more modern, more accessible and more competitive,” says Edie. The legislature, he adds, has recognized that higher education suffered during the budget cuts of the early 1980s.
Edie also says that many legislators recognize the unique contributions of the University of Washington to the state. “There is growing recognition that—be it a Nobel Prize winner, a National Book Award winner, minority recruitment successes or a Rose Bowl victory—this is a special place and it needs to be protected.”