Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Study: Despite new funding formula, Northern Nevada schools still come out on top

Updated Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014 | 10:56 a.m.

Nevada’s new higher education funding model may not be the great equalizer it was billed to be for Southern Nevada schools, according to a UNLV Lincy Institute report released today.

Last year, the Legislature approved a new formula to divvy up funding among each of the seven schools in the Nevada System of Higher Education. The new model was designed to balance the funding to schools in the north and south using a weighted student credit hours.

But Brookings Institute nonresident fellow David Damore claims in the report that the formula’s impact isn’t so straightforward. In some ways, Northern Nevada schools benefited more than Southern Nevada schools, according to the report.

“A reform that was supposed to rectify long-standing regional funding disparities instead delivered the most benefits to the institution that has been historically privileged,” said Damore, who is a political science associate professor at UNLV.

A spokesperson for the Nevada System of Higher Education said Chancellor Dan Klaich hadn’t had an opportunity to read the report and, therefore, could not comment on it.

Damore’s study analyzed the budgets of Northern and Southern Nevada schools. Northern Nevada schools are UNR, Truckee Meadows Community College, Western Nevada College and Great Basin College. Southern Nevada schools are UNLV, the College of Southern Nevada and Nevada State College.

The report found that while the new formula funds UNR and UNLV at the same level, UNR received twice as much funding not tied directly to the formula.

That money is distributed by the state to support programs like the University of Nevada School of Medicine and UNR athletics, among other programs.

UNLV also receives non-formula funding for its Boyd School of Law, dental school, athletics and other programs, but not as much as UNR.

Damore said UNR received $52 million in total non-formula funding, more than twice the $24 million UNLV got.

Funding for the other colleges also remains unbalanced.

Each of the other Northern Nevada schools receives more funding than the Southern Nevada schools, the study found.

Damore said it is difficult to measure the impact of the funding imbalance because there was no study done to measure how much it costs to educate a student at each of the schools in Nevada. Instead, the state used other cost studies and applied them to Nevada.

“No one knows how much it costs to educate a kid at UNR or CSN,” Damore said.

Assemblyman Andy Eisen, D-Las Vegas, who serves on the Interim Finance Committee that helped create the formula, said he has not had a chance to read the report. He noted that work still needs to be done to fairly distribute funding to the state’s seven institutions.

“The change in the last session was a step in right direction,” Eisen said. “I don’t think anybody is under the impression that the job is done, but it made things better than it was in the past.”

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