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IHL leaders ask Senate subcommittee for 16% budget increase, cite deferred maintenance and rising insurance costs
Summary
Leaders from Mississippi’s Institutions of Higher Learning told a Senate appropriations subcommittee they are requesting a 16% increase over fiscal 2025 to address faculty pay, rising PERS costs, insurance deductibles and deferred maintenance; they also confirmed a $126 million bond request and warned of an enrollment “cliff.”
Leaders from Mississippi’s Institutions of Higher Learning asked a Senate appropriations subcommittee in Jackson for an across-the-system funding increase and flagged growing maintenance and insurance costs as immediate pressures.
The system’s commissioner, Doctor Rankins, told the subcommittee the Institutions of Higher Learning (IHL) are requesting a 16% increase over fiscal year 2025 “to address faculty salaries, the increase in PERS employee contribution, the increase in insurance and other inflationary cost,” and to support a facilities management plan and the system’s Complete to Compete (C2C) initiative.
The request is part of a broader presentation in which Rankins said the university board has maintained oversight and that the system holds an A2 credit rating from Moody’s Financial Services. He said system initiatives have produced more than $330,000,000 in savings and that universities awarded over 19,000 degrees in 2024, a nearly 16% increase since 2014.
Why it matters: university presidents told the panel that pay and enrollment trends are the…
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