Response from Professor Theobald
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I have received the same e-mail from a number of you so please forgive me my canned response. Your correspondence asks me to review the health care budgetary decisions made in the last year. Health care, as well as all other budgetary decisions, are made in a context. I've attached an overview of our budget priorities this year.
Between 2000-01 and 2005-06, state funding for general operations has decreased $14.3 million in nominal terms. For 2006-07, the state cut our funding by another $2 million. At the same time, we've held tuition increases in each of the last two years to the lowest in the Big 10 (IUB=4.9%; Big Ten Average=8.2%).
In this difficult budgetary context, I am extremely proud of the compensation gains we were able to provide to our faculty, staff, and students. With regard specifically to graduate student insurance, the campus increased the budget by 40%. To do this, we had to make some extremely difficult decisions:
- We employ 12 fewer faculty this year,
- We employ 28 fewer professional staff,
- We employ 7 fewer hourly staff,
- We cut the facility maintenance budget by $400,000
- We eliminated a very popular Adult Fitness Program for the Bloomington community
- Over-all, we eliminated $6.4 million in current spending
We did this so we could provide faculty with 4% average salary increases, professional staff with 2.7% increases, and hourly staff with 2.5% increases. We hired faculty and funded graduate students to start new academic programs. We increased financial aid by $5.2 million. As I mentioned, we increased graduate student insurance by $1.3 million or 40%.
An increasing share of our revenue has gone to professional salaries, benefits, and student academic appointees over the last five years. We hope to do even more in each of these areas in upcoming years. To facilitate this process, Interim Provost Michael McRobbie has appointed a Student Health Insurance Task Force that will study--under the leadership of the Task Force chair, Dan Rives --the three student health insurance plans currently sponsored by IU: (a) SAA/International/ Fellowship Recipients Student Health Insurance Plan (mandatory), (b) Medical School Student Health Insurance Plan (mandatory), and (c) Undergraduate and Graduate Student Health Insurance Plan (voluntary). The goal is to develop insurance plans that will allow IU to attract and retain top students.
From our actions, I believe it is clear that we place an extremely high priority on this issue. I look forward to working with all of you to address the challenges we face.
Neil Theobald
Neil D. Theobald
Senior Vice Provost and Special Assistant to the President
Indiana University-Bloomington
Bryan Hall 100
Bloomington, IN 47405
(812) 855-3565
theobald@indiana.edu