If there were just one thing he could ask for, BSU President Bob Kustra told legislative budget writers this morning, it would be to preserve the proportion of state general fund support in the university’s budget. “Please keep that 28 percent where it is today,” he told lawmakers. “If that general fund continues to decline, then your questions are going to get tougher – why are our students paying more, why are they leaving the state. … I know the days are long gone when universities could count on 40 or 50 percent.” But the current level of state funding is “what we need to do the job we do today, and if it goes down, that makes life very difficult indeed,” he said.

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