Indiana University

State Relations

Appropriations Request

Every two years the Indiana General Assembly must pass a biennial budget. This budget process is a critical component of the university’s financial support in providing excellence in education and research. The next budget session will take place in 2011.

IU’s appropriations request includes formula funding awards for increasing degree completion and improving our faculty’s research productivity, and other incentive-based rewards promoted by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education. IU’s capital priorities are the renovation and rehabilitation of existing facilities as well as several new projects aimed at improving academic instruction, research, and student life. These items are designed to preserve quality while continuing our commitment to support the state’s economic development efforts.

Key Higher Education Provisions – Enacted Version
Biennial Budget Bill - HB 1001

Operating Funding

  • The enacted bill included expansion of performance funding as proposed by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education:
    • $61 million in total performance funding, which comes from a 5% across-the-board assessment to each campus’ FY 2011 operating appropriation.  The campuses were required to fund the performance funding pool due to the lack state financial resources.
    • Six performance funding measures are applied to each campus.
  • The performance funding mechanism produces widely varying results for various campuses.  For example, within the IU system, operating funding changes for FY 2012 range from -5.5% for the Bloomington campus to +9.7% for the Kokomo campus. 
  • One of the positive aspects of the operating budget is continued $3 million per year funding for expansion of the Centers for Medical Education.
  • The only area of higher education funding receiving an increase, for the second biennium in a row, is student financial assistance grants. 

Facility Financing

  • No appropriations were included for repair and rehabilitation (R&R) of existing academic and research buildings.
  • No new capital projects were authorized in the budget.
  • Fee replacement (debt service) funds were included for all projects reviewed and approved as of the April 15 State Budget Committee meeting. Fee replacement funds for both the IU Northwest Tamarack Hall and IU Southeast Education and Technology building, authorized in the current biennial budget, were not included.

Other Provisions

  • The bill includes no tuition cap language (as included in the House budget) but revises the existing tuition public hearing statute to ensure that universities hold public hearings after the ICHE has issued its tuition guidelines (as included in the Senate budget).
  • Of great importance to IU is inclusion of language requiring ICHE to consider mission differentiation in future performance funding mechanisms.