The Missouri House and Senate moved to increase core funding for state colleges and universities while subjecting additional funding to an undeveloped performance-based model.
The two chambers of the General Assembly ironed out their differences on most of the state budget bills Wednesday as they work to establish a state budget by a constitutional deadline of 6 p.m. today. The bills are still subject to final approval in both chambers and need the governor's signature.
The conference committee took a blended approach by funding each public university with a 7 percent core increase while also putting $16.8 million under a performance funding model that was commissioned last year.
"We're doing belt and suspenders here," said House Budget Chair Cody Smith, R-Carthage.
For Lincoln University, the 7 percent increase amounts to an extra $2 million and brings total core funding to $33.3 million, including more than $10.4 million for its land grant match that was funded for the first time last year. State Technical College of Missouri is set to see more than $9 million in core funding.
The conference committee appropriated an extra $2.1 million for Lincoln to join the Missouri Consolidated Health Care Plan, a health insurance system used by most state agencies. The funding was added by the Senate to help the university compete with the state in attracting workers.
LU President John Moseley said joining the health insurance system has been a priority of the university and its staff for years, but it has lacked the funding to do it.
Moseley said the proposed investments approved by the conference committee are "significant" and "exciting."
"The state's investment in higher education speaks to our belief that education provides a platform for folks to better position themselves for a successful life," he said.
The university's full land grant funding, which it hadn't received in more than three decades until last year, largely wasn't a discussion this year, Moseley said. At this point, he said, it should be a "permanent fixture" of the state budget.
Lincoln is poised to receive an additional $10 million from the state to build a health sciences and crisis center on campus and State Tech is set to receive $10 million for campus construction, which will be used to expand the capacity of some technical programs.
An additional $16.8 million will be spent on colleges and universities based on a performance model resulting from a pair of studies the House pushed for last year.
The studies were created to suggest public higher education performance funding models and potential reforms for higher education efficiency. The state contracted with the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems to conduct the studies, the first of which was published in December.
After reviewing the state's history with performance funding, a 2018 funding equity study and discussions with the Missouri Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development, the contractor did not recommend a model but suggested performance funding be a component of an approach that "accounts for the entirety of state appropriations, performance as well as base funding," according to the report.
"Performance funding models have little chance of being successfully implemented or achieving state goals if they are layered on top of a base funding model that is fundamentally flawed -- the funds institutions receive from the state in recurring allocations are either inadequate or inequitably distributed (or both)," the study stated.
Suggestions for the revamped approach and potential reforms are expected July 1.
Moseley said the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems has been visiting college campuses and the institutions have had a chance to weigh in, but it's unclear what the recommendations will be.
"It's the great unknown," he said.
"We're still working through kind of what that could look like for all of our higher education institutions," Moseley said. "But we want continued progress at Lincoln University to put ourselves in position to ensure that we're meeting the state's performance measures that have yet to be determined."
Language restricting spending on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives was also stripped from the budget during Wednesday night's conference. The House had added the language to each spending bill while similar efforts in the Senate failed.
"We're going to go with the Senate position of nope on that," Hough said during the conference hearing.
The conference committee fully funded the state's scholarship programs as well.
The needs-based Access Missouri Scholarship will receive $75.4 million, the A+ Scholarship program will receive $60.3 million, the MoExcels Workforce Initiative grant will receive $38 million, the Bright Flight Scholarship grant will receive $27.6 million and the Fast Track Workforce Incentive grant will receive $4.7 million.