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Reveley: Full Impact of Higher Ed Legislation Not KnownBy Amber Lester Kennedy Saturday, March 05, 2011
On the good side, no additional cuts were proposed; the GA did not impose a requirement to reduce the percentage of out-of-state students admitted; funding for capital projects was not reduced and the GA allocated $900,000 for various programs on the main campus. An additional $550,000 will go to VIMS. On the bad side, the impact of several decisions is not yet known. The General Assembly recommended that participants in the Virginia Retirement System pay 5 percent toward their retirement, provided they’re given a 5 percent salary increase. The GA did not propose any changes to the contribution rates or salaries for employees hired after July 1, 2010 or participants in the Optional Retirement Plan. William and Mary’s employees are almost evenly split between the VRS and ORP plans, he wrote. “When it comes to salaries, this means that only some people at the college are in line for a raise. Raises for some and not others are troublesome. The fact that William and Mary employees as a whole have not received salary increases for three years makes any inequities, real or perceived, especially painful,” Reveley said. “We will work hard to ameliorate this situation if we can.” While the GA didn’t approve any new cuts to higher education, it did not alter a $10 million reduction enacted last year. That cut has yet to be distributed among the state schools, and WM has no information about what its share of the cut will be. William and Mary has challenged the state’s push for its colleges to accept more in-state students. While the GA did not approve a proposal to lower its percentage of out-of-state students, both WM and the University of Virginia agreed to add more in-state students. William and Mary plans to enroll a total of another 150 in-state undergraduates over the next four years, starting with an additional 38 in the class of 2015. The college will also accept about 50 more out-of-state students in that same time period, he said. Also unknown is how the newly adopted Virginia Higher Education Opportunity Act will affect the college. Reveley characterized the legislation as “quite complex and very long,” noting that “its actual meaning will become clear only as it is implemented.” As the college prepares its budget for Fiscal Year 2012, it must still close a $6.8 million funding gap that had been filled by one-time stimulus dollars for FY 2011. |
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William and Mary President Taylor Reveley presented the votes of the General Assembly as a mix of good and bad in an e-mail to the campus on Friday.
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