Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] no new laboratory space for Mizzou? [politics, I guess]

["Jonathan King" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On 7/8/07, Jerry Gamblin <EMAIL:PROTECTED> wrote:
> > Do you have some evidence that this is not correct, Jerry?  It seems odd
> > that you would interpret Republican removal of money for MU as the fault
> > of the Democrats, claiming that the Democrats "infuriated the
> > Republicans."  Think, Jerry -- maybe, just maybe, the Republicans just
> > suck and it's no one's fault but their own.
>
> This had little to do with human embryonic stem cell research.
>
> Try this links while I look for some more:
> http://www.columbiatribune.com/2007/Mar/20070314News034.asp
>
> The democrats blocked this bill when it still had the Health Since
> Building in it.

OK, so this is not a very informative article, but here's something
that caught my eye:

# Blunt's plan would use $350 million from the Missouri Higher
Education Loan Authority to
# finance dozens of construction projects at public colleges and
universities. The
# wide-ranging bill also would impose caps on university tuition
increases, create a new
# scholarship program and require universities to be judged on
performance criteria.

So by this point, the bill already included a lot of other stuff
besides the health science building. I will note that the cap on
university tuition increases was probably a particularly important
thing. I don't know what the cap was, but I *do* know that in the lean
times for MU in the late 90s and the earlier part of this decade, the
only way that the university kept it together at all was in part
through its ability to raise tuition (which they had to do when state
appropriations were going down or were flat at best). I don't know
which version of "scholarship program" this is, but I know that in the
past, some Republicans were pushing programs that would give state
scholarship aid to students who were planning to attend in-state
private schools, but coming out of the same pool as funds for Mizzou
et al. I'm not sure what the performance criteria being proposed were,
(sounds like a new-ish proposal), so I'm not sure what to say there.

But the point is that this was not *just* a bill that included the
Health Science Center, but also included a bunch of other stuff, and
the tuition cap *should* have been a non-starter because I know from
experience that the state feels free to cut Mizzou when the state has
hard times. In any case, what ended up being voted for is not
especially impressive, and this is really too bad.

jking

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