Many of Baldacci’s plans will come as good news to some — such as a focus on wind power — but we take issue with one of his suggestions: the idea that the wages of public high school teachers should be dictated by their students’ performace.

Teachers have an important role to play in the development of students that goes beyond raw regurgitation of information, but there is only so much they can do for students who have to be there.The age-old saying holds true: You can lead a student to class, but you can’t make them learn.

Not only would it be ineffective, this policy is open to multiple abuses, such as students doing poorly on purpose to get back at their instructors or teachers compromising their standards to improve grades.

Teachers are already required to get reaccredited every five years, which includes 45 hours of training in material relevant to the subjects they teach. This is a good system, ensuring teachers stay fresh and focused in their professions without putting the unhelpful pressure of trying to work miracles before a potentially hostile audience.

We’re glad the governor is thinking ahead for new ways to help our state, but we think he should go back to the drawing board for this one.

“Today we’re laying the groundwork for economic revitalization and freedom from the tyranny of foreign oil,” Baldacci said. “The work going on at the university by Dr. Habib Dagher with private sector partners and critical support from the federal government is positioning our state at the forefront of a new energy revolution.”

The Advanced Engineered Composites Center received millions of dollars in federal money this October to build a wind energy development center, and is part of a consortium of public and private organizations working to develop wind energy infrastructure in the state. Baldacci said the investment in energy production could help Maine recover from economic recession.

“Right now Maine is leading New England in wind power generation, and every day this important sector is growing, producing renewable and safe electricity,” Baldacci said. “From start to finish, Maine has a role to play. We can develop the technology, use the composites from the University of Maine to build the turbines, and lower electricity rates.”

Baldacci set a new goal of creating 5 gigawatts of energy from offshore resources by 2030 and said the state was already ahead of schedule to meet that goal.

“Whether you believe in global warming or not, ending dependency on foreign oil is a matter of national security that demands action now,” Baldacci said.

Turning to education, Baldacci said administrative reform, such as school district consolidation, was not enough to improve Maine’s education system.

“Teachers and principals are responsible for their classrooms and the students in them. Student achievement must be part of how they’re evaluated,” Baldacci said.

The governor acknowledged the proposal would be controversial, but said that “recognizing good teachers is an overdue reform.”

Rep. Emily Cain, D-Orono, said the governor’s goals for energy independence rely on Maine’s university system.

“The University of Maine has positioned itself to be a catalyst for change in the energy sector,” Cain said.

“The goals he outlined for a stronger Maine economy cannot happen, in my opinion, without strong higher education institutions, both two-year and four-year,” Cain said.

Baldacci said new efforts to streamline government through more job and spending cuts will be needed to close the $438 million budget shortfall and railed against tax increases, including an effort on the ballot in June to raise the personal income tax.

“I will not support a tax increase to balance this budget,” Baldacci said to extended applause from Republicans and a few Democrats.

“Working families and small businesses deserve a tax break, and Maine needs jobs now,” he said.

“The governor has made it very clear, and been very consistent, that he’s not interested in talking about new taxes … to address any part of the budget problem. But I’ll tell you, on the legislative side, those lines have not been drawn in the sand,” Cain said.

Cain said the Joint Standing Committee on Appropriations and Financial Affairs, of which she is one of the chairwoman, is still evaluating the proposed budget, but that “everything is truly on the table. We have not ruled anything out yet.”

The curtailment order for all state entities totals more than $63 million. The system’s cut of $5.97 million is the third largest, representing 3.38 percent of its state appropriation.

Public education took the largest curtailment order of $38.1 million, and the Department of Health and Human Services received the second-largest cut of $11.15 million, representing 1.35 percent of its state appropriation. Maine’s community college system received a cut of nearly $1.7 million.

The system was expecting a curtailment order of $7.5 million, according to Rebecca Wyke, vice chancellor for finance and administration. The smaller curtailment order is intended to reduce the impact on the system’s three smallest campuses and reduce the number of class sections eliminated, Wyke said.

“We were notified in mid-October that we would have a likely reduction of approximately $7.5 million. The governor’s announcement of his curtailment today actually reduces that to just under $6 million,” Wyke said.

The individual schools won’t know exact numbers for a few days, but UMaine spokesperson Joe Carr said the university would not cut any personnel because of the curtailment.

“We’ll do things like reduce capital projects and cut in other non-personnel areas,” Carr said.

UMaine will use stimulus money to help fill the gap left by the curtailment.

“As of right now, we don’t have detailed plans for how we’ll manage this. We don’t have the exact number in fact. So all we can really say is, in general, the plan is to use the stimulus money to a great extent,” Carr said.

Wyke said when the curtailment is originally proposed, each campus submits an impact report to the system office, which then combines the reports into one. The original impact statement said the curtailment could limit acquisition of library and instructional materials and delay necessary repairs to facilities. The report also said the University of Maine at Machias might have to cut its campus security, and the University of Maine at Presque Isle might have to cut student employment. UMM spokesperson Erik Smith said Friday the campus would most likely no longer have to reduce its security force.

“It was something that was included in the impact statement,” Smith said. “I believe it would have been in the form of further reduction. At this point, with the revised, or reduced, curtailment, we won’t know exactly how that will impact our campus budget until next week when the president’s cabinet has a chance to discuss the revised numbers.”

There were 13 liquor law violations that resulted in judicial referrals and no arrests on the Machias campus in 2007, according to UMM’s crime report. In the same time, there were 591 liquor law violations at UMaine, 92 of which resulted in arrests and 499 of which resulted in judicial referrals.

The system received $174.9 million in fiscal year 2001, according to Wyke. This year’s initial appropriation was $176.4 million, which has since been reduced to $170.5 million.

“It has been fluctuating quite a bit over the past years,” Wyke said.

“GSBS is all that it could possibly have been in terms of the high expectations we have set for this program,” said UMaine President Robert Kennedy.

GSBS is a collaborative graduate education program involving higher education and biomedical research institutions statewide. Baldacci helped make the graduate program a reality and heaped appreciation on the work its students and faculty members have accomplished. After a quick speech, he took a tour of students’ research projects. Stodder Hall was filled with six-foot-tall posters of research methods and hypotheses and tables covered with biomedical research tools. Baldacci perused the posters and tables, stopping briefly to talk with each student about his or her research.

“I’m very proud of the University of Maine being the kind of conduit to bring all of the different businesses and non-profit and research institutions together, so that we can mobilize this state for not only being able to create economic development opportunities, but giving you an opportunity to do it here in our state,” Baldacci said.

Kriston Gabor, one of the graduate students displaying her research during the event, said her research focused on increasing resolution in microscopy to determine if a certain protein is involved in the body’s immune response. Qing He, another student, said her research could help identify a key factor of cancer migration and ways to stop it.

“Three GSBS students have recently completed their doctoral work and are now physicians at General Electric Health Care, the Jackson Laboratory and Case Western Reserve University,” said Carol Kim, director of the GSBS.

UMaine founded the program in 2006 and has since brought 36 students to it. Baldacci’s support was instrumental in winning financial support for GSBS from the state legislature, according to Kennedy. The program provides doctoral-level education in genomics, bioengineering, biophysics, nanotechnology, molecular and cell biology, neuroscience, toxicology and the molecular mechanisms of diseases. In honor of Baldacci, a student scholarship was created in his name. Baldacci last visited GSBS in 2006.

“Three years ago, I stood here to celebrate this bold step and its promise to better align our education system with Maine’s research and development strengths,” Baldacci said. “Students here have access to the talented pool of researchers and educators; they have the opportunity to get quality graduate education in the disciplines of the biomedical sciences. We are driving Maine’s innovation economy by combining cutting-edge research with education training and entrepreneurship. This graduate school is about creating economic opportunities for young people; it’s about attracting graduate students, but it’s also about helping Maine compete with the rest of the world and get the best and the brightest.”

GSBS member institutions include UMaine, the Jackson Laboratory, Maine Medical Center Research Institution, Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory, University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine, Maine Institute for Human Genetics and Health and the University of Southern Maine.

“I think that the [Maine Judiciary] Committee will report it out as an ought to pass … but I don’t know the strength of that vote,” Damon said.

Damon said he expects Gov. John Baldacci to sign the bill into law if the Maine Legislature approves it, even though Baldacci has not voiced any support or opposition.

“It’s going to be tight. I think the House will probably pass it, and I think the Senate will be close,” Damon said. “I have great hope that we will pass it and get it out.”

Standing before several students and other listeners in the Coe Room of the Memorial Union, Damon said the hearing the day before was one of the most incredible events of his career. The hearing was originally scheduled for April 24. Damon said this made his speech at UMaine either anti-climactic or more historically contextual.

He said he talked to Baldacci prior to the hearing, not to ask him for support, but to request the governor “do nothing,” in that he not veto the bill. Damon said Baldacci did not promise to pass the bill, but that “he is willing to let the discussion and the dialogue go forward.”

“I thought it [Damon's speech] was amazing,” said Charles Chapin, a fifth-year psychology, child development and family relations student.

Chapin, a member of Wilde Stein, said he went with the group to the April 22 hearing. He said he respects Damon and thinks the senator can get the bill passed.

L.D. 1020 will go to a work session of the Maine Judiciary Committee Tuesday April 28, which will be open to the public. The work session may last more than a day, Damon said. He expects the bill will be voted out of committee some time within the next two weeks and that the Maine Legislature will vote on it in mid to late May.

Damon told students that some of his personal history prompted him to sponsor the bill. He said he watched an anti-war rally as a student at UMaine during the 1960s where protestors opposed the U.S. military presence in Vietnam. He said he was less tolerant during the ’60s and joined in decrying the rally. After a dean showed him pictures of himself at the demonstration and told him to be more understanding, Damon said he learned to be more open-minded.

“I would have been one who would have been criticizing; I would have been one who would have been belittling,” Damon said. “Seven years ago, I’m pretty sure I would not have sponsored the bill.”

Damon said he initially felt he wasn’t the best person to sponsor the bill, but said its drafters did and convinced him to support it. He said they felt he should sponsor the bill because he was a straight, older male senator with political capital who represents a rural area, among other reasons.

“I was astonished,” said Kathrine Anderson, a second-year chemistry student who attended Damon’s talk Thursday. “I had no idea he could be so connected to people.”

Damon said he has a fan page on Facebook and estimates 15 to 20 percent of the approximate 600 people on it are not supporters of the bill.

Damon said he originally had felt a referendum on the bill would be beneficial, because it would embolden legislators and remove some of the fundraising ability and martyrdom attitude felt by opponents.

“I thought that it would perhaps provide the cover that some legislators might need to vote on it because they could say, when they went back home to their districts, ‘yup, I voted on it, and I voted on it to pass it, because I want to send it out to the people, so that the people can ultimately vote on it,’” Damon said, who ultimately dismissed the referendum idea. “Our responsibility as legislators is to do the people’s work – that’s what we were sent there to do – and to simply send this out to referendum without a vote on it I think is wrong. We don’t run our government that way. If we did that continuously, then there would just be a series of referendums.”

Damon said the bill is not a “big deal” for young college students today; it is his generation that needs to change. He said “any religion, any church” will not have to perform a marriage that does not fit with their religious doctrine if the bill becomes law, and that notary publics – people authorized to marry others – will also not be bound.

One listener asked Damon about L.D. 1020′s sister bill, L.D. 1118.

“To me that’s not it, and it smacks of ‘separate but not equal,’” Damon said, who mentioned he had not met L.D. 1118′s sponsor Leslie Fossel until a week ago.

Another listener asked about the argument of timing, whether it was time for a marriage-equality bill.

“It’s a favorite argument, one that drives me nuts. … It’s always time,” Damon said. “If it was next year, I guarantee you there’d be another reason why ‘not now.’” Damon said he has dismissed this argument “as a shallow attempt” to stop the issue from progressing.

When asked whether religion will enter the Judiciary Committee’s decision on the bill, Damon said some of its members are deeply rooted in religion and some are not. He feels the majority of Maine’s legislators believe the state’s laws are based on secular issues.

Damon praised the testimony from the supporters at the April 22 hearing.

“It seemed that the amount of testimony for the bill was maybe three times greater than the amount of the testimony opposed to the bill, and so by that sheer numbers alone, I think might have had some impact on the committee,” Damon said. “I have been enlightened some by some of the testimony I heard.”

Damon also commented on the economic benefits of the bill, saying a report he recently viewed at the Bangor Chamber of Commerce estimates the additional permitted marriages will bring $60 million to Maine in three years. He said the Bangor Chamber of Commerce supports the bill because of the economic benefits and that the money side of the debate had not occurred to him prior to seeing the report.

“It’s not any reason not to do it,” Damon said.

Damon pushed people to continue their support of the bill.

“Don’t give up. Don’t give in. Don’t give in to the opposers, and don’t give in to your emotions,” he said.

The report maps out Maine’s past, present and future climate and notes trends such as increased temperature, increased precipitation, rising sea levels and hydrologic changes in snow melt, lake ice-out and spring runoff.

“I had an opportunity to talk to the president [Obama] about this after the election. I think, as he said last night, he is serious about it, and I think this is a way to keep the issue in front of people . It’s a very sobering report,” Baldacci said.

In late 2007, Baldacci asked UMaine to prepare a preliminary analysis of the effects of climate change in Maine during the 21st century. UMaine gathered 75 scholars from the university and around the state to work on the yearlong project.

“This is, in fact, the state of the art for our understanding of the climate change in Maine. UMaine has within its bounds the very people that are instrumental in understanding climate change. We have been involved from the very beginning, and we want to provide our expertise,” said professor Paul Mayewski, director of UMaine’s Climate Change Institute.

Even if a coordinated response succeeds in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, climate change will continue because elevated levels of carbon dioxide can persist in the atmosphere for thousands of years to come, the report states. In the next 100 years, they predict a 5- to 10-degree Fahrenheit temperature increase in all regions of Maine for all seasons.

“This doesn’t necessarily mean disaster. This time of year it probably wouldn’t bother too many Mainers to have a higher temperature or have a longer golf season . but the chemistry of the ecosystem will change. It will not be the same 100 years from now. We are quite confident that’s the case,” said Professor Emeritus George Jacobson, one of the report’s primary authors.

“This is clearly something that will serve as a focal point and a beacon to all of us – where we need to look at and what we need to do to make sure we are having a positive impact on our children’s and grandchildren’s lives,” Baldacci said.

Sections of the report address how climate changes will affect Maine ecosystems and economic sectors such as agriculture, forestry and tourism. They predict warming water will reduce the distribution of cold-water fisheries. And in forests, warmer temperature will increase disease, insect infestations and fires.

Farmers are already realizing their growing season has expanded a couple of weeks, Baldacci said.

“There may be opportunities for different kinds of forest products. We might be able to have different kinds of crops and opportunities there,” Jacobson said.

It wasn’t long ago that people didn’t want to talk about adapting, Jacobson said. It was viewed as throwing in the towel and allowing carbon emission and pollution to persist.

“We’d be doing really good if we could completely stop emissions tomorrow. It won’t happen unless an asteroid comes,” Jacobson said.

“One of the points of this report is even if humans collectively do a good job in the future, there’s no way we can stop the climate from changing. We need to adapt to this system and be looking for opportunities for things that are new and be able to deal with the challenges,” Jacobson said.

The report also touches on alternative energy sources. Imported fossil fuels account for nearly three-quarters of all energy used in Maine. More than 80 percent of Maine households heat with fuel oil – the largest percentage in the United States, according to the report.

“I know that Governor Baldacci and many of us are interesting in finding as many ways that we can to have renewable energy in the state,” Jacobson said.

The report describes Maine’s potential for wind, tidal and wood-fired electricity generation. Maine is listed as the best state for wind energy development on the East Coast, and several of North America’s most robust tidal energy sites are located in Maine, according to the report.

The report is a way of making the issues more public and more obvious, Mayewski said, and it shows the growing relationship between state agency and universities.

The field of climate change has evolved rapidly over the past 30 years, according to Mayewski. The February 2009 report is a broad analysis based on a global model. The Climate Change Institute is now working on a new model of 10-by-10-mile blocks to investigate changes occurring on a regional scale in greater detail.

“We need to keep a strong finger on this,” Mayewski said.

The report was prepared under the leadership of UMaine’s Climate Change Institute and Maine Sea Grant with support from several UMaine organizations and departments: the vice president for research; Office of the Dean, College of Natural Sciences, Forestry and Agriculture; Center for Research on Sustainable Forests; Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Environmental and Watershed Research; Forest Bioproducts Research Initiative; and the Department of Plant, Soil and Environmental Sciences.

“We are proud of this report, and I can say with assurance that there’s not another group of scholars in this world that could have written this report of Maine. We did this with great enthusiasm,” Jacobson said.

The 70-page report is available for download at climatechage.umaine.edu/maineclimatefuture.

Three-thousand copies will be printed, available upon e-mail request.

“It’s a thing every University of Maine student ought to read,” Mayewski said.

“We appreciate what the governor is trying to do to help Maine through the stimulus package,” John Diamond of the University of Maine System Relations said.

Included in the approximately $4 billion request was “at least $52 million” for infrastructure at institutions of higher education. In addition, Baldacci requested student loans be funded on a higher level and money to increase research and development, though not specifically at the University of Maine.

“The university is in support of an effort that is currently in both the Senate and the House stimulus package. That includes money for higher ed.,” Diamond said.

It is difficult to assess how effective Baldacci’s letter was, but the recently passed House version of the stimulus package included an additional $15.6 billion for Pell Grants and money for building repair and research and development, among other items. These and other funds will most likely not be distributed directly to states.

Because the stimulus package has not been signed into law, the state has not yet taken any stimulus money into account while preparing the budget, with the exception of Medicaid. David Farmer, a spokesperson for Baldacci, said a promised increase in federal funding for the program helped avoid an additional $100 million of cuts in the biennial budget.

President Obama’s stimulus package still has to be passed by the Senate. House and Senate versions must be reconciled before the law can take effect.

Heather Steeves contributed to this report.

The breakdown of Baldacci’s request:

Infrastructure

$500M – roads and bridges

$186.9M – public transit and trails

$130M – water infrastructure projects

$250M – repair, upgrade and weatherization

of state facilities

$1.88B – school construction and repair

$3-5M – affordable housing

$52M – higher education

$200M – improve energy efficiency of business facilities

$100M – support wind power research

$72M – weatherize all Maine homes

$115M – expand fiber optics in rural Maine and fund electronic health records

Baldacci also requested increased money for safety net programs, shared state-federal

funding programs, education and infrastructure as well as expanded funding for student loans and funding for research and development.

From the letter Gov. Baldacci sent to President Obama on Dec. 31, 2008

The budget cuts come on the heels of spending freezes at the university level and reductions in the amount of grant money offered by the Finance Authority of Maine.

The day after the proposed budget was announced, University of Maine System Chancellor Richard Pattenaude released a plan to achieve financial stability for the system. The plan calls for the creation of a task force to assess cost-cutting measures and recommend structural reorganization.

The report, titled “New Challenges, New Directions: Achieving Long-Term Financial Stability,” is meant to address what is expected to be a $42.8 million revenue gap in the next four years – if the UM System proceeds on its present course.

Pattenaude said in a press release, “The university system must pursue deeper and broader change that ensures its academic quality and service to Maine, maintains affordability for undergraduate and graduate students, and achieves operating efficiencies and cost-reductions. We have no choice.”

In November, the university had to cut $6.5 million from its 2008-to-2009 budget to help balance the system budget, in addition to $5.3 million already cut earlier that month by order of Baldacci. On Dec. 1, the Finance Authority of Maine, which distributes grants to students, reduced the State of Maine Grant by $60 per student. On campus, Faculty Senate has discussed moving to a four-day workweek to reduce energy costs and many departments have instituted hiring freezes. The UM System recently failed an affordability review by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

The proposed budget, which has yet to pass into legislation, would provide $536 million to fund higher education, which includes the University of Maine System, the Community College System and Maine Maritime Academy. The University of Maine System funding would be cut $5,028,700 from the last biennial budget.

The budget also suggests combining more purchases with the state of Maine in order to further reduce costs. While the biennial budget has not yet made it into committee, the Education and Cultural Affairs committee “reluctantly” approved the proposed education cuts in the supplemental budget.

“During these incredibly difficult economic times, the governor worked very hard to limit reductions to higher education,” said a spokesperson for the governor. If the budget becomes law, it will be the first biennial budget in at least 35 years that is smaller than the one before it.

John Diamond, a spokesperson for the university system, said the system is dedicated to providing an affordable education and that “one of the primary goals of the chancellor is to minimize the impact [of any restructuring] on the students.”

According to Diamond, the system may save money by centralizing departments, but no campuses will be closed. The number of campuses in the University of Maine System is dictated in state law, and so far neither the governor’s office nor the legislature has made any indication they want to close any campus.

“The plan is to maintain seven universities and seven presidents,” Diamond said.

A cost-saving measure that may be investigated is online courses, which Diamond described as “high quality” alternatives “to some face-to-face classes.” A four-day workweek has not, as of yet, been discussed at the system level.

According to the Finance Authority of Maine (FAME), all full-time undergraduate in-state students from all the University of Maine System campuses, roughly 13,000 in all, were affected by the grant’s decrease – 2,600 at UMaine. Decreased state funding caused by Gov. John Baldacci’s budget cuts forced the drop in financial aid.

“From a financial aid perspective, we in the aid community looking at all of the students – and specifically here at Orono – felt that the impact would be less if we spread it out among all the students,” said Peggy Crawford, UMaine’s financial aid director. “For us here, the maximum grant for spring semester, for students who are eligible, instead of being $600 it’s $540.”

Crawford said FAME and the university system considered two options for managing the grant reduction: taking the grant away from its recipients with the highest income, or spreading out the cut among all of the students. They chose the second option.

FAME and the university system considered spreading the $60 between students’ fall 2008 and spring 2009 bills, but decided it was a bad idea to bill students for the $30 FAME gave them this semester, Crawford said.

The grant reduction accounts for about $155,000 in financial aid at UMaine, Crawford said. She was unsure how much future financial aid cuts might be. The whole cut accounts for a loss of about $780,000 of financial aid for the entire UMaine System.

“I don’t think it was avoidable,” said FAME’s acting director, Beth Borbowitz. “I’m hoping there won’t be more cuts for 2009.”

Borbowitz and Crawford acknowledged the likelihood of more decreases to state-funded financial aid in the future.

“When the governor came out and said that he was looking for a 10 percent reduction across the board, FAME, because of the size of dollars – especially because of the grant program – that’s where they had to take the cut,” Crawford said.

On Nov. 19 the university was ordered by the governor to cut $5.3 million from its budget, as part of Baldacci’s curtailment order to state agencies – $1.2 million less than what the state demanded earlier in the semester. UMaine’s curtailment was reduced to mitigate the direct impact on its students, according to David Farmer, a governor’s office spokesperson.

“We have no solid plans to reduce further grant funding. This is the amount that we are taking from the University of Maine and the University of Maine System for 2009,” Farmer said.

Farmer acknowledged the possibility of future reductions and said the state currently has no plans to introduce more financial aid.

“I hope we can keep the allocation at FAME the same as it is right now, so that the same students who are eligible this year will be eligible next year,” Crawford said. When asked whether she felt that was a realistic hope, she said, “Probably not.”

“We spread the pain, but we understand it’s painful,” Borbowitz said.

Gov. John Baldacci ordered UMaine to reduce its budget by about $5.3 million Nov. 19, which may make the 6 percent goal difficult to reach.

UMaine’s undergraduate in-state tuition increase was 9.6 percent in 2009. If UMaine’s state funding decreases next year, the university will likely see a similar increase in undergraduate in-state tuition balanced with program reductions, according to UMaine President Robert Kennedy.

Baldacci signed an official curtailment order demanding reductions of all state agencies on Nov. 19. Baldacci ordered UMS to reduce its budget by $8,372,135 – approximately $2.2 million less than originally anticipated. UMaine is shouldering $5,375,308 of the curtailment.

Campus security, student employment, scholarships and student food services budgets may have to be reduced to fulfill the order, according to a curtailment impact report from the governor’s office. UMS campuses may have to consider tuition “adjustments,” but only as a last resort, according to the report.

Of the seven colleges in the UMS, UMaine has the second-highest undergraduate tuition rates – second only to the University of Maine at Farmington, according to the system office 2009 fiscal year budget report.

UMaine had the second-lowest in-state undergraduate tuition increase rate in the 2007, 2008 and 2009 fiscal years. According to Janet Waldron, vice president for Administration and Finance, the reason UMaine’s tuition is so much higher is because UMaine does more research than universities like UMA or UMF.

State funding to UMS increased by approximately $300,000 in the 2009 fiscal year to $186 million. This was a 4.4 percent drop in the annual rate and $7.7 million less than 2008′s increase. If this trend of declining state funding continues, tuition will rise because UMaine will get less money than it needs.

Students won’t be left with the whole bill, according to the university.

“We get our fair share of the state appropriation, and if the state appropriation decreases, then we have to turn to tuition in order to balance our budget. But we never increase tuition to the level that would cover all of our costs, because we would then lose our students,” said Claire Strickland, director of Budget and Business Services.

For the last four years, UMaine has been forced to decide how much to increase tuition each year, at the same time trying to decide how much that increase will deter students. The university looks at increases other land grant universities are considering and what has worked for UMaine in the past to decide where to cap tuition. Then the university tries to increase financial aid and marketing to out-of-state students while cutting parts of the budget to make up the difference, according to Strickland.

“We look at what all of our costs are for the next fiscal year including compensation, including student financial aid increases including library acquisition increases, energy, etc., and then we look at what the gap is between our projected revenues and our projected costs, and we try to peg tuition such that it isn’t inordinately affecting students’ ability to come back to school,” Strickland said.

The resulting tuition increases, when combined with other revenue sources, leaves a negative gap between income and the university’s costs, according to Strickland. UMaine uses that gap to determine what to cut from the budget.

“The campus then needs to decide what it needs to give up – give up in positions, give up in operating budgets – in order to balance the budget, and that’s where you see positions that have been eliminated and operating budgets that have been reduced,” Strickland said.

UMaine’s students, operations and visitors generated $360.6 million in revenue during 2006, according to a university economic impact report. The money Maine puts into the university doesn’t produce revenue that goes straight back to the state government, according to John Diamond, executive director of External Affairs. UMaine benefits the economy, but students should still expect tuition increases to coincide with state funding decreases.

“The distinction is that the economic impact of the university is not money that necessarily goes into the state general fund; it’s money that flows through the economy, some of which comes back to the state in the form of sales tax or income tax, but a lot of it does not,” Diamond said. “It supports business of all kinds; it helps pay local property taxes which are not part of the funding stream that the university receives – and a host of other purposes.”

Most of the revenue UMaine produces comes from sales of sporting event tickets, food and returns from grants and state funding, according to Todd Gabe, professor of agricultural economics.