The initial recommendations are in from the House Budget Committee, and it’s a bit of mixed news for higher education.

The House recommended cutting Bright Flight and Access Missouri by 5 percent each. There is no funding for the Governor’s Missouri Promise Initiative, but state appropriations will remain at the same levels as FY 2009.

The scholarship and grant cuts were the big news for Paul Wagner

“I was a little surprised by it actually,” said Wagner, Deputy Commissioner for the Department of Higher Education. “Especially on the House side, they have been very aggressive in putting more money in student financial aid and that’s really been one of their top priorities in recent years.”

Wagner said it won’t necessarily mean fewer scholarships if the recommendations are adopted, but instead would mean smaller scholarships for qualifying students.

“In terms of replacing these cuts with other funds, it’s still pretty early in the process,” Wagner cautioned. “House members still have a chance to make amendments in committee and on the floor, then it has to go through the Senate. It’s way too early to say what all the options are, there’s a lot of federal money out there that’s available for almost anything.

Institutional budgets had state appropriation levels reduced to those of 2006, with the difference replaced by federal stimulus dollars.

“If it wasn’t for this federal stimulus money I’m fairly confident there would have been some serious cuts necessary to the institutional budgets,” Wagner said. “It’s really worked out well I think, even though it would be nice to have some increases to make up some lost ground over the past few years.”

Wagner said in order to draw down a large amount of stimulus money, the state had to maintain the current funding level for colleges and universities.