By Carmen McCollum, Times of Northwest Indiana
carmen.mccollum@nwi.com
Even as Gov. Mitch Daniels has announced the need to cut higher education by $150 million, Indiana State University unveiled an ambitious five-year plan that calls for growing its enrollment by 1,500 students, increasing graduation rates and even becoming more involved in the community.
The university, which traditionally has attracted hundreds of students from Northwest Indiana, has an aggressive plan to increase its enrollment to 12,000 students by 2014.
University President Daniel J. Bradley pledges to diversify revenue in an effort to limit future tuition increases and attract and retain a diverse pool of talented faculty and staff. The plan also aims to strengthen the university's most distinctive programs, continue to upgrade student housing and other facilities, and construct a new "front door" entrance from U.S. 41.
Bradley, along with a delegation of university and ISU Foundation representatives, is touring the state, meeting with ISU alumni organizations and talking to students and parents who are considering enrolling at the university. He was in Merrillville on Dec. 6.
Of the 10,500 students enrolled at ISU, Bradley said 12.5 percent of them are black, 10 percent are international, and 5 percent are from out of state.
From 2005 to 2009, 2,066 students from Lake County graduated from ISU with undergraduate and graduate degrees while 475 students from Porter County earned similar degrees during the same time period.
Bradley said some of the most popular programs are criminology, teacher education and business.
Meanwhile, Bradley expects to see a slowdown in capital expenditures.
"We don't know what our share of cuts in higher education will be," he said Wednesday while visiting Northwest Indiana.
"We expect to get more specific information next week."
He said the university saw a reduction of $5.5 million, or 7 percent, in its state appropriations in July. Roughly 50 percent of the university's budget is made up of state appropriations while the other half comes from tuition.
With state funding to ISU declining, the plan also calls for a 50 percent increase in revenue from grants and contracts, a similar increase in revenue to the university from the ISU Foundation, and growing revenue from student fees by enrollment growth rather than tuition increases.
"Several institutions around the country have looked at furloughs and reduced pay," Bradley said. "We may need to do a structural change to make it possible to continue functioning. It may be several years before we get back to previous funding levels."