The Missouri legislative panel held its second of three higher education hearings Tuesday at the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg.
The legislature’s Joint Committee on Education is working to develop a funding formula that would divide state money given to higher education institutions. State Representative Mike Lair said he would like to see Missouri’s community colleges included in the new budget. But, he said the new budget’s success depends on cooperation from all office holders.
“Basically, this is a process just like the budget process," Lair said. "First of all, we need to make sure the governor doesn’t do what he did last year and cut $105 million off the top. You know, he did that before we we even started the budget process last time and it took us the entire budget process to put that $105 million back in.”
Lair stressed that developing the funding formula is a long process. He said the old money distribution process failed to reflect the number of students involved, instructional cost and other important factors. The new funding formula would be implemented for the 2015 budget year.