Missouri Southern’s state appropriations were recently reduced by nearly $2 million.

“It was widely known early in fiscal year 2011 that higher education would likely suffer an appropriation decrease in the state budget for fiscal year 2012,” said Jeff Gibson, director of budgeting and operations, said.

Gibson explained how the University’s Executive Budget Committee discussed the options regarding the budget and they then presented their ideas to the Budgeting and Auditing sub-committee of the Board of Governors.

According to Gibson, the Executive Budget Committee took considerable time trying to decide how to make up the loss of state appropriations for 2012.

In the past, this problem has been solved by balancing the budget through cuts.  However, this time when appropriations were cut, both the Executive Budget Committee and the Board of Governors Budget and Audit sub-committee decided that the budget cuts could not continue without decreasing the quality of education for University students.

As a result, the University decided to increase tuition as an answer to the reduction in funds.

State appropriations were reduced by $1.7 million, a 7 percent decline.

“There was a direct correlation between the loss in appropriations and the need to recover the lost revenue through tuition,” Gibson said.