Wednesday afternoon, the Texas A&M System board of regents holds their next public meeting.
The agenda includes consideration of fiscal year 2018 operating budgets for the system and its member universities and agencies.
This is after the regents heard budget presentations earlier this month.
The leaders of the flagship campus and the health science center both told the regents a continuing issue to increase enrollment is reducing the ratio of students to faculty.
A&M president Michael Young told the regents it’s something he promised the new provost, who is coming to Aggieland from Michigan…which has a much lower ratio.
Dr. Carrie Byington at the health science center says they have six times the students per faculty member compared to other centers. Byington says the college of medicine has 168 faculty members, when it should have 1,600.
Young and Byington also brought up the increasing cost of paying for military veterans and family members covered by the Hazlewood exemption. During the just completed academic year, the flagship campus paid almost $21 million dollars, of which almost $18 million went to family members under the “legacy” portion of the exemption. Hazlewood students receive resident tuition and required fees for up to 150 credit hours.
President Young also brought up the cost of deferred maintenance, where $25 million dollars has been set aside for identified deferred maintenance projects. Young also said another $40 to $50 million is spent on projects that arise during the year. Young says smaller buildings in a dense area on central campus increases deferred maintenance challenges because the infrastructure for each building is relatively independent. And the president said they are contracting an outside organization to look at the inventory of classrooms, lab space and other areas on campus.
Wednesday’s regents meeting starts at approximately 2:30 p.m. at the Brayton fire training field’s operations complex.
