What the Governor submitted last year was what was funded by the legislature. Next year is an election year and legislators want to look good, so there may be some relief from that. The president will meet with the Governor in October. The Board of Regents will meet with the legislature in Anchorage November 12. There appears to be no understanding of how much money that research brings in.
Research is an income generator for the university and for the state.
Regarding bloated staff, the university can demonstrate that staff have been reduced over the past several years, way below average in comparison to university systems in other states. Regarding rural education, we are not the University of the Great Big Cities and will not close the campuses. Our consitutents live in all of Alaska, not just in Anchorage and Fairbanks. When some of the legislators talk about dropping the rural sites, they are also including Juneau in that group. These three issues have been addressed in the UA Advocate newsletters that were published this spring.