By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer

The University of Hawai'i Board of Regents' Finance and Facilities Committee received discouraging news this week: Because of state budget constraints over the past decade, the net purchasing power of the university has fallen from $332.5 million in 1991 to $268 million this year.

In a painstaking presentation that traced a decade of cuts for the state university system, Deane Neubauer, interim vice president for Academic Affairs, gave the regents' committee a vivid year-by-year picture of how far state support for the university has fallen.

His chart shows legislative appropriations, executive hold-backs, tuition levels and a net amount equivalent to purchasing power for each year through the 1990s up until today.

In only three years over the past 12 has there been an increase in the purchasing base: in 1993-94, 2000-01 and 2001-02.

The losses are staggering, and clearly show major erosion of support for higher education in Hawai'i.

"As an institution we need to make clear that our ability to create and sustain a modern, complex institution of post-secondary instruction, research and service can only be severely compromised by further cuts in our general fund base support," Neubauer told the regents.

"It is not just the 20 or so million (dollars) extracted from our programmatic budget in fiscal year '03 that needs to compel our attention," he told the regents, "but the cumulative effect of these cuts over the past dozen years."

According to Neubauer's figures, the purchasing power of the university fell by $64.5 million during this time period, coming to rest at these levels each year. The figures do not include capital improvement projects spending.

• 1991-92 — $332.5 million
• 1992-93 — $317.4 million
• 1993-94 — $321.7 million
• 1994-95 — $314.6 million
• 1995-96 — $285.8 million
• 1996-97 — $285.8 million
• 1997-98 — $281.2 million
• 1998-99 — $273.2 million
• 1999-00 — $270.5 million
• 2000-01 — $272.6 million
• 2001-02 — $281.8 million
• 2002-03 — $268.0 million

As state revenues have fallen, money from outside sources has become increasingly important, and has grown accordingly. During that period the university gained direct control of its tuition dollars under Act 161, and can now boost revenues by increasing enrollment or tuition or both.

But it also gained a great deal of outside support in the way of money raised by the UH Foundation in independent fund-raising campaigns, as well as grants and contracts from the federal government for research.

"It's important to realize that Research Corporation of the UH employs some 1,600 people as a direct result of contracts and grants," said Neubauer.

"Much of the burden of creating and sustaining a physical plant and infrastructure ... has fallen on sources external to the general fund."

Given such a picture, more cuts to the university would continue a downward spiral of the institution's ability to serve the community. Like the public libraries, the university is an institution that cannot continue to sustain more cuts without having those cuts go into the bone.

And when that happens, it begins to diminish access for the thousands of new students who, come graduation day in June, will look to their state institutions for the next hopeful step in their education.

Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8013.