UT President Dr. Joe DiPietro and UTC Chancellor Steve Angle
photo by Gail Perry
The University of Tennessee system now has a budget that is unsustainable, UT President Dr. Joe DiPietro told members of the Hamilton Place Rotary Club on Wednesday.
He said around 2010-2011 the amount of money from families and students began to exceed the state’s contribution to an in-state college education at a state university.
In the past four years increased costs in the form of tuition and fee hikes have been passed on to students and parents because state appropriations have declined.
The speaker said the school was founded upon the need to provide a broad-based education to the masses. With the continuing cost increases, a college education for individuals has become more difficult, and it needs to stop, he said.
For 2014-2015, the budget for the entire system is $2 billion with $4.45 million, around a quarter of the total, coming from the state of Tennessee. The rest must be generated by the university system itself. That currently is coming from grants, contracts, tuition and fees. “We own the problem,” he said, not the state.
Dr. DiPietro, whose campuses include Knoxville, Chattanooga and Martin, said he views his job as a way to centralize services for the schools. He said he does a lot of advocating for each and along with the chancellors, participates in setting goals and achieving them each year. He likened each chancellor as the CEO of the campus that they oversee.
Managing the system is like raising children, he said, each campus is unique and needs to be nurtured individually, “I want excellence for all.” You cannot buy every child everything they want every time; sometimes you have to say no, he told the audience, leading to the topic of “Funding for the Future.”
Recent achievements for the schools include the Knoxville campus being chosen by President Obama as an Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation (IACMI). It will lead a public-private consortium of manufactures and universities to develop lower cost, higher speed manufacturing using “advanced composite materials” which are strong and light weight materials for innovative applications such as making car parts, as needed, on 3-D printers. For this, the school was awarded a $259 million grant provided by both public and private entities.
Another accomplishment is that the Chattanooga campus led by Chancellor Steve Angle has been designated a 2015 Community Engagement University by the Carnegie Foundation. This recognizes strong partnerships between a university and the community and addresses the issues and needs of businesses, agencies and people in the surrounding area of a school. Both Knoxville and the University of Agriculture have also won this title.
"We are doing more with less, and we are doing the right things," said Dr. DiPietro. He acknowledged that there is competition across the system and that the leaders work hard to find out what is really needed and where. Then degrees are developed and offered that will help businesses in Tennessee without duplication.
He said that three “E’s” function as a guide. “Effective and Efficient” stands for cost efficiency. “Entrepreneurial” points to creating additional revenue that is needed and to figure out how to do it. “Excellence” stands for the pursuit of always getting better.
In order to manage the budget, some chancellors will make decisions that will disappoint you, said the president. Something you want may need to be eliminated. This is the only way to move forward. Because the schools can no longer be sustained on fee increases, he said in his next four-year term he will be dedicated to finding a solution to the problem. As the business is being managed and the schools are accomplishing great things, adjustments will have to be made.
“We’ll be a different place in the next four years,” he said.