Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] Money + MU = bad

[Jonathan King <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Sun, 8 Dec 2002, Rick Buford wrote:

> Would here be a good place to insert a snide comment on the
> University/Hospital's complete disregard for fiscal matters? =)

Uh, and if it weren't? :-)

Seriously, I've seen several research universities, and I can't say that
MU is less responsible than most overall.  The Hospital has made some
really bad decisions in the past few years (they paid money for Columbia
Regional!), but even "perfect play" would not have left them in great
shape.  All hospitals attached to medical schools that end up absorbing
indigent care costs etc. have been in big trouble recently.

I think the biggest mistake the UM system made was the way they handled
mission enhancement.  This was intended to enhance the mission of the
university system essentially by increasing the number of faculty lines.
The problem was that you could just predict what would happen if the state
ever had a budget crisis... Now we're back where we started (e.g., 1998)  
in terms of dollars from the state, but what *didn't* really get fixed, 
but could have been, was some of the huge, gaping infrastructure problems.
So, you are unlikely to be able to build up a distinguished medical school 
when you have essentially no lab free space at all on the med school
campus.  It would be nice to have stronger graduate programs, but tough to 
pull that trick off when you're cutting the real library acquisitions 
budget...and it just goes on and on.

Now, the really scary thing these days is that the university just LOST
the big lawsuit over their charging tuition at a time when state law
forebade that.  (The loophole is now closed, and the suit could only
address charges that happened within the statute of limitations.)  If the
judge now decides that full back tuition and interest needs to be refunded
for the years that were at stake, the bill is...$450 million.  This could 
never be paid off in one year, so I think we're more looking at a 5- or 
10-year plan (at like $80 million per year), and the money is very likely 
to come directly from at best a flat budget line.  The carnage could end 
up being tremendous.

jking


--
To unsubscribe, go to http://mlug.missouri.edu/members/edit.php

Archives are available at http://mlug.missouri.edu/list-archives/