President's Testimony

FY 2009 Governor's Allowance and What it Supports

• UMB trains the majority of the State's health practitioners and a plurality of its attorneys and biomedical researchers.  Maryland also faces serious shortages in most health care areas.  The FY 2009 Allowance partially addresses some of these shortages. [Chart 6]
  
  
• Governor O'Malley's FY 2009 Allowance for the University of Maryland Baltimore shows a $20 million increase in the State supported budget, of which $11.4 million is in general funds, $4.3 million is in tuition and $4.3 million is from the new and very exciting Higher Education Investment Fund .  Fully two-thirds of the increase responds to mandatory increases in salaries, fringe benefits, retirement costs and the like.  [Chart 7]
  
  
• $2.1 million continues to help fund the commitment that UMB and the Regents made to double the production of pharmacists within the next five years.  This will help address the local and national shortage of pharmacists, an area of particular concern given the aging of the Baby Boomer generation.  [Chart 8]
  
  
• Like the pharmacy expansion, the $3 million for the nursing expansion relates directly to the State's health care workforce shortages.  The nursing shortage is one of the most challenging problems the State of Maryland, and indeed the nation and the world faces.  The shortage exists at all levels -- associate's degree RNs, baccalaureate and masters trained specialty care nurses, and nursing faculty trained at masters, the Doctor of Nursing Practice and PhD research levels.   It may be a truism but it bears repeating that we cannot increase the number and quality of clinical nurses without increasing the number of graduate-trained nursing faculty.  Among all the nursing programs in the State, the UM School of Nursing, already the largest nursing school in the country, is also the principal producer of nursing faculty.  The funds budgeted this year will be used primarily to meet equipment and infrastructure needs associated with the nursing program's expansion to Shady Grove.  [Chart 9]
  
  
• $300,000 primarily relates to capping tuition increases for our undergraduate nursing and dental hygiene students and also reflects UMB's share of the Regents' enrollment funding initiative.
  
  
• The Higher Education Investment Fund (HEIF) at UMB is the source for the tuition cap, the enrollment funding increase and the nursing expansion.  This fund is also being tapped to provide $825,000 in assistance to the medical school to help offset the cost of some research equipment needed for the University of Maryland Institute in Genome Sciences, the UMIGS.
  
  
• The HEIF is the most promising enhancement initiative the State of Maryland has established for higher education in my 14 years as president of UMB.  Our $4.3 million share of that fund is allowing us to begin to address the State's workforce needs, to continue to support our enrollment growth and to invest in research equipment.
  
  
• With respect to the enrollment funding initiative the analyst has recommended funding enrollment increases only after they are achieved.  UMB has not had difficulty in meeting enrollment targets; if anything our challenge is to stay within planned growth limits.  However, if the University System of Maryland is to meet its share of the higher education needs of this generation, it must have guaranteed funding to recruit and hire the faculty and staff that will be needed to handle the planned expansion.
  
  
• The analyst has noted that our faculty complement increased by nine positions in FY 09.  All of these positions are directly related to the pharmacy expansion at Shady Grove.  Had we not been guaranteed that the funds would be available, we could not have recruited the needed faculty.  I urge you to reject the analyst's recommendation on enrollment funding.
  
  

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