Separate FSU budget for FAMU-FSU College of Engineering grows to $7M

The separate budget that Florida State University has for the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering (COE) is continuing to grow. A WCTC-6 story on the COE from yesterday reported that “the budget is $12.9 million, plus $7 million from FSU that will be going to the joint college.”

That is up from last year. A Tallahassee Democrat article from 2014 reported that “the FSU budget is $5 million ‘and has been growing,’ [Dean Yaw Yeboah] said.” That money paid for 36 FSU professors in 2014. The separate FSU engineering budget was also referenced in the study that CBT University Consulting presented to the Florida Board of Governors earlier this year. The study said that there was “roughly $6 million within FSU that supports Joint College faculty and research.”

FSU receives money for its separate engineering budget in its general revenue from the Florida Legislature.

CBT explained that in 2015 that “the budget is administered by FAMU as agreed in the 1987 Memorandum of Agreement. As a result, when FSU has wanted to increase funding of the Joint College unilaterally, it has designated funds within the FSU budget but not transferred them into the Joint College. Presumably, this is to retain control of the funds in the event that they need to pull some back. Hence, there is another roughly $6 million within FSU that supports Joint College faculty and research.”

Both chambers of the legislature originally placed $12.9M for the College of Engineering in the FAMU general revenue budget at the start of the 2015 session. But on February 19, FAMU President Elmira Mangum gave her support to a BOG proposal that asked the legislature to create a new budget entity for the COE. The plan said that the new budget entity would “include all operating funds for the Joint College, including the appropriate amount of plant operation and maintenance funds.”

The legislature set up the new budget entity for the COE the next month. Documents from the education appropriations subcommittees of the Florida House of Representatives and the Senate show that “all operating funds for the Joint College” are not in the new budget entity. The only funds that were moved into the new budget entity were the Education & General (E&G) dollars that were previously in the FAMU budget.

The Joint College of Engineering Governance Council passed a resolution back on May 20 to shift the $12.9M core operating budget of the COE from FAMU to FSU. That decision was made with a vote of approval by the FAMU Board of Trustees.

According to a WCTV-6 story on the COE fiscal agent shift, “administrators say this puts FSU in charge of implementing decisions of the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering Governance Council...FSU says the move does not give FSU more influence than FAMU, as some fear the change suggests. Administrators say all decisions will made by the council.”

The Joint College of Engineering Governance Council is formed in a way that could let FSU and the BOG chancellor simply vote together in order to make sure that FSU gets its way on all the big budget decisions. The BOG chancellor is the tie-breaking vote on the Joint College of Engineering Governance Council.