<p>Here's what you need to know if you want the Promise restored:</p>
<p>Dear PTA Advocates,</p>
<p>With fewer than 48 hours before the Oct. 1 budget deadline, it's
imperative that we keep the pressure on the Michigan House to
preserve education funding. If you've already made calls to your
elected officials, we thank you for your efforts. Given that it's a
new week, we're asking that you make another phone call to your House
member. Devastating cuts to education are being proposed and the
Promise Scholarship for college students is in jeopardy of being cut
or eliminated.</p>
<p>These cuts would threaten the future recovery of Michigan!</p>
<p>It is urgent that you CALL your Representative and your Senator now!</p>
<p>Tell them that they must reject the current proposal and send it back
to conference committee and to use all of the stimulus funds in the
2009-10 year.</p>
<p>Also, we're asking that you forward this message on to your network
of interested parents and community members to help amplify the
message that education must be a priority.</p>
<p>Michigan PTSA is urging you to take action to put pressure on your
lawmakers.</p>
<p>If you have difficulty contacting your legislator directly, please
use these links:</p>
<p>If ever there was a time for advocacy on behalf of public education
funding, it is now. We urge you to join us in a collective call to
the Legislature to protect education funding and ensure a prosperous
future for Michigan and its children! </p>
<p>Kevin McLoganVice President for Children's Advocacy</p>
<p>waste of money.
would rather have them relocate the money into actually funding their public universities as opposed to a putrid 7% annual funding and having out of state students subsidize the in state students on top of paying their fair amount of tuition because the state cannot hold up their end of the bargain…</p>
<p>I have been calling and emailing regularly and hope others will do so as well, it only takes a moment of your time and it really does make a difference.</p>
<p>Bearcats, I don’t actually disagree that the Promise funds could be better used actually FUNDING Michigan’s public universities. I do however take umbrage with an institution that PROMISES something and then breaks the PROMISE. So, I feel they should have PAID the promise money, closed the structural funding deficit with a different taxation model, and then PLANNED to phase out and redeploy the Promise funding, for example.</p>
<p>I would agree with that as well. My beef is just that I was sent a letter saying I had been awarded money that I am now no longer going to get if they cut the program. They can stop sending those letters from now on for all I care, but the money already awarded needs to be sent.</p>
<p>I agree as well. It is just not right to PROMISE a scholarship and then pull the rug out from under all those kids. Just really hard to believe anyone could think that is right. As for the out of state students subsidizing the institution, I don’t think that is a problem at all. Those who don’t have quality state universities as an alternative probably come from places where the voters and their representatives have chosen either not to tax or to direct their funds elsewhere. Why should they be subsidized by the residents of Michigan. No one forces anyone to come to UMich. Just like no one forces anyone to go to a private school that is similarly priced. The state of Michigan may not be funding the university as it once did, but it still OWNS it, so who is to say that residents should not get a benefit of that ownership. When out of state students stop trying to get into UMich that will signal the moment when it has ceased to be worth the price of their tuition.</p>
<p>“Michigan may not be funding the university as it once did, but it still OWNS it, so who is to say that residents should not get a benefit of that ownership.”</p>
<p>Sorry. the state of Michigan does not OWN the university. The University of Michigan is a seperate legal entity affliated to the state of Michigan but not OWNED by the state of Michigan. The board of regent has every right to vote to privatize. The only case the state could have against the university from doing so is the land granted at the beginning that was originally owned by the state. It is pretty obvious that the land of Ann Arbor is maybe worth 5-8% of the endowment MAX so U of M could totally take a one time hit.<br>
We all know this wont happen because the idiots in the board of regent are loyal to the state, not to the university. They’d rather do what’s good for the state, not good for the university.</p>
<p>Hey I got news for you, if you are only going to pay for 7% of the budget, why don’t you send 7% of the overall population at U of M as in state students here?</p>
<p>There is no state ANYWHERE in the nation that pays only a putrid 7% of the overall budget to its flagship public university. This is a FACT. and it’s not even close.</p>
<p>So dont talk about Michigan tax payers money because the Michigan tax payers ain’t paying anywhere close to how much its residents are receiving. </p>
<p>“Why should they be subsidized by the residents of Michigan.”</p>
<p>Guess what? No one is asking the state of michigan to subsidize non-residents. The state of Michigan should PAY for the difference between out of state and in state tuition for all its in-state students. That’s a fair model. For all I know the state of Michigan doesnt come even close to doing that. This means strictly from a economics point of view, it is better off for U of M to take a one time hit and pay up the land grant money, break ties with the state and charge everyone out of state tuition. This makes perfect economic sense. They could afford better financial aid while increase their income stream, all while ridding the student population of a significant number of unqualified instate students and increase the school’s prestige.
Bottomline is Michigan needs to do what is good for Michigan, not the state of Michigan.</p>
<p>I don’t understand how 7% of the budget comes out… Do they respend their entire endowment every year? I’ve done the math, if enrollment were kept the same, they are effectively subsidizing 50% of the undergrads with 300Mil/year. They do come pretty close to subsidizing everyone (they are subsidizing 77% of in-state undergrads).</p>
<p>Okay, requires a lot more investigation.
From what I just read, the endowment at 5% generated $300 m which is 7% of budget. From 2003 onward, State has cut apx. 11% by 2007 at $40 m.
ACTUAL budget, however, runs apx 4.5 billion annually (I think).
So, tuition is a portion, state a portion, endowment a portion etc.
But can’t get how $300 - $400 million from state could be offsetting much of 40,000 student cost is the actual outlay of cash each year is 4.5 billion.</p>
<p>My facts may be entirely screwed. Will revisit but bearcats since you’re a math guy, map it out for me if you have a chance. Then we can see who has the most skin in the game. (We know in advance you will be a little OOS biased but we’ll exploit your math brain nonetheless : )</p>
<p>So in other words, for every $1 the State contributes to U of M, a student contributes $2.58 in fees, but together both the State and Student fee/foundation contributions only comprise 24% of the annual $4.78 Billion expenditures?
Wow.</p>
<p>Yes but also remember housing (dorms) and food and all those revenues do not fall under student fee if you read the whole page.</p>
<p>I actually did the math on paper how U of M shortchanged the university if you assume the model of in-state tuition + state funding/no. of instate students should = out of state tuition which intuitively would mean there is a set amount tuition necessary per student, out of state student pays the whole amount, instate student pays the difference between that set amount and state funding. This is in my opinion the fair model. No one is bending over their back to subsidize the other group in this case.
I will scan it after this class and upload it later…</p>
<p>Bearcats, your model completely ignores the fact that the University is a Michigan institution, whether you want to call it ownership or not, there is no reason that the only benefit to in state students should be the differential represented by current state funding. That gives the benefit of the past support of the university, the cost of the infrastructure etc. equally to in state and out of state. I still say the fair price for out of state students is whatever the traffic wil bear.</p>
<p>None of that nonsense about how much they’re actually spending matters at all…</p>
<p>The only thing that matters is what money do they lose if every student who was paying instate tuition were to pay out of state tuition, and how much of that is covered. And in fact about 81% of it is covered. I’m sure you can figure out the math yourself if you took an Algebra I course, but incase not I’ll explain it.</p>
<p>(sate contribution)/(OOS tuition - IS tuition)<em>(# of undergrads)</em>(proportion of undergrads)*(2 semesters) = percentage of IS students subsidized by the government.</p>
<p>I’m just going to go with LSA lower division to make things simplier. It will not change much if you weight it by college and division. I’m also assuming 65% of undergrads are instate. </p>
<p>When I previously said 77% I think I was using old data or something… now my answer is more favoring my position. </p>
<p>And this is not to mention the huge benefit of the lower tuitions. They get a huge applicant pool from Michigan, they allow themselves to be more selective, and they will always be guaranteed to have a full capable entering freshman class, regardless of the economy. </p>
<p>One more thing, I would be very willing to bet that instate students on average take fewer credits than OOS students, making it cheaper to have enrolled instate students than OOS.</p>
<p>Any 7% of endowment figure is completely irrelevant and misleading.</p>
<p>And yosup, the thread has been hijacked, now it’s about the state of Michigan’s contribution to the University.</p>
<p>^ Ohh lol. Well a Michigan senator is coming to our school on Monday, and I’ll definitely bring up the Michigan Promise Scholarship. Not sure how much influence he has though…anyways, anyone know how I should bring up the issue and discuss it? I’m never spoken to a government official…lol :)</p>
<p>^Be respectful, ask him what reasons the state had for canceling it, how those didn’t apply previously, and if the impact of canceling it is worth it. I don’t think it’ll make a difference though. If I were him I’d probably come up with a polite way of saying “Michigan doesn’t support Socialism” but as a Democrat he’d probably have trouble.</p>
<p>I won’t even argue with the method because statistics can be easily manipulated just by the way a person carries out a calculation. My method (using the ratio between state contribution + IS tuition vs OOS tuition shows much more dramatic results. But as one would learn in statistic class, you could always pick a method that makes your point stand out so I am not going to bother with then. </p>
<p>So lets say we adopt your method:
Did you totally ignore spring/summer term there? That itself could be a 10-15% swing.
Did you ignore the fact that instate students are required to have their needs met 100% and a big chunk of the financial aid comes from MICHIGAN GRANT which is paid by the university from the general fund? That itself is at least a 10% swing again assuming that OOS students gets 80% needs met (this is a WAY generous number to give) based on the average financial aid per student data.
Did you ignore the grad school discount for in state grad students? That’s also at least a 10% swing and probably A LOT more because a huge proportion of michigan students are grad students and the discount is about 50%.</p>
<p>These 3 factors alone would at least bring your percentage down to 50 and possibly lower (edit here because I didnt think about the grad school tuition impact at first)</p>
<p>“And this is not to mention the huge benefit of the lower tuitions. They get a huge applicant pool from Michigan, they allow themselves to be more selective,”
Really? There are 2 types of selectivity. Selectivity by number and selectivity by quality.
Case in point:
U of M : 42 % acceptance rate
Tulane: 27% acceptance rate
are you seriously going to tell me that Tulane is more selective than U of M? Because selectivity by number means nothing if the pool is saturated by unqualified candidates. And since the in state pool’s average stats are significantly lower than the out of state pool, your so called selectivity is simply selectivity by number.
What we need is selectivity by quality, which could be achieved by privatizing and attracting out of state students. Prime example of selectivity by quality: UChicago</p>
<p>“Any 7% of endowment figure is completely irrelevant and misleading.”
Why does this even have to do with endowment? The state contributes 7% to the university’s overall annual budget. For every 100 dollars the university spend in a year, the state contribute 7 dollars. I am sure that’s pretty relevant. Try to find me another state that contribute less % to the operating budget of its state flagship because I can guarantee you cant.</p>