Gov. Strickland raises efficiency standard to receive tuition freeze funding

Included in his $55 billion budget, Gov. Ted Strickland has again required colleges and universities to report efficiency improvements in order to receive tuition freeze funding.

Schools will have to prove to the Board of Regents they improved budget efficiency by 3 percent in each of the next two years.

Dawn Weiser, assistant to the vice president for Finance and Administration, explained the efficiency requirement doesn't necessarily mean budget cuts and Ohio University will report any cost-saving measures it can quantify.

It might take spending money to save money

Weiser said. We will try to quantify anything we do to be more efficient it underlies everything we do.

OU President Roderick McDavis addressed the requirement in an e-mail sent to students and faculty Tuesday.

The governor's strategic investment in education makes it all the more important that we become more efficient and effective McDavis said. The governor's proposal requires us to achieve new efficiencies equaling three percent of our budget in both fiscal years.

During the original freeze, schools were required to report a 1 percent improvement last year and a 3 percent improvement in fiscal year 2009, said Rob Evans, administrative assistant for the Board of Regents.

This is exactly what happened with the previous tuition freeze

Evans said, adding the only major difference is schools are required to attain a 3 percent improvement both years.

Weiser said OU will improve efficiency primarily through sharing costs across departments and cutting administrative expenditures.

We have learned from the state that they are expecting us to run the university in a smarter way

Weiser said. We will be coming up with ideas to save costs and working them into our budget planning.

According to Rebecca Vazquez-Skillings, assistant vice president for Budget Planning and Analysis, OU submitted this year's 3 percent efficiency report to the Board of Regents during Fall Quarter.

This year's report will be available at the end of this fiscal year in June.

Weiser said she doesn't anticipate OU having a problem meeting the efficiency requirement.

We've been thinking about these things for 10 years; we are used to having to keep track of our efficiency

she said. I would hope that even if we weren't looking at a budget deficit we would still look at how to do business smarter and more cheaply.