UI’s Hoover Pitches For Equity Amid A Salary Cap Batt Leaves No Room In Budget For Board Of Education’s Top Priority For State’s Colleges And Universities, But Interest Remains Keen

University of Idaho President Robert Hoover wowed the Legislature’s budget committee Tuesday with tales of classroom innovation and research breakthroughs.

Pictures set into charts on his computer screen came to life, moving, changing and speaking to lawmakers about university programs and showing them at work.

But Hoover’s pitch for higher salaries to help the UI keep its best professors may not go far. Although it’s the Board of Education’s top priority for the state’s colleges and universities this year, the so-called “salary equity” plan didn’t make it into Gov. Phil Batt’s budget proposal.

Sen. Atwell Parry, R-Melba, Senate Finance Committee chairman, said the budget committee often sets state budgets below the governor’s recommendation. “We’ve seldom been known to add to it,” he said.

“But there’s a lot of interest in the committee on salary equity, so I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Lawmakers may decide to trim something else in the higher education budget to come up with salary equity money, Parry said.

Hoover highlighted professors who are doing ground-breaking research, and are getting offers to go to other universities or private companies for far more pay.

Assistant professors at UI make 5 percent less than their peers, he said, but full professors make 11 percent less. “The longer you stay with us, the worse off you are relative to your peers across the West.”

He told of a chemistry professor who makes $90,000 a year, but is being recruited for $50,000 more. The professor has brought in millions in research funding, he said.

“How do we keep this person in Idaho?”

The governor’s budget calls for a 7.2 percent increase in state funding for Idaho’s four-year colleges and universities, a big step up from last year’s hold-the-line spending plan.

It includes 5 percent more money for salaries, as part of the statewide plan to give state employees raises.

Student fees may go up, Hoover added. “I think it’s important to keep fees at least where they are today,” he said. “I think what’s important to do is deal with that part of the population that has difficulty paying these fees.”

Those students should get scholarships, he said.

“Then there are those students who can pay those costs, and should be paying them.”

A UI study showed that when adjusted for inflation, fees as a percentage of Idaho household income haven’t risen since 1980, he said. But Idaho’s economy is deeply split between those who can easily pay the fees, and those who can’t.

Hoover said the UI is facing new competition, with universities like Stanford offering programs in Idaho through distance learning.

Idaho will stick to its strengths, he said: Being the state’s main residential campus, focusing its research on areas where it has a competitive advantage and can boost the state economy, and doing outreach to wherever in the state its programs are needed.

Hoover told of a business program that wasn’t meeting the needs of corporate employers.

“So we junked the entire junior year,” he said.

That year of instruction was converted into a cooperative effort with a corporation in which the students work in teams, do internships and gain practical knowledge and experience. The first company to participate was Harley-Davidson. Now, the university is working with Micron.

He highlighted a UI professor, Carolyn Bohach, who spends half her time teaching and half doing research. She’s discovered a virus that attacks the strain of e. coli that caused deaths from contaminated meat. Her work has brought the university $200,000 in lab equipment and $1.5 million in research contracts.

She also employs 28 undergraduates in her lab doing scientific research, and that helped the university attract a top Idaho scholar who could have gone to school anywhere, Hoover said.

Hoover also shared the story of a Bellevue, Idaho, rancher who earned most of his degree while still on the ranch, without visiting the Moscow campus. That was possible because of innovative outreach programs that use distance-learning techniques and flexible programs.

The rancher, Gary Farrington, said in a video clip that in addition to working toward a degree, he learned about soil fertility and weed programs that allowed him to increase his hay production by 80 percent.

Hoover told the budget committee, “I would argue that your investment in the UI has been a very sound one.”

, DataTimes