Senators take UH to task over spending

The University of Hawaii, already smarting from Gov. Josh Green’s changes to its requests to increase its biennial budgets, got no sympathy from state senators demanding more accountability on UH spending and leadership during a contentious meeting Thursday.

The briefing started off with senators’ pointed questions about UH’s budgets and plans and, as has been typical in recent years, became a wide- ranging and sometimes tense showdown in which UH officials were grilled for almost four hours on everything from whether their primary quest to expand its Hawai‘i Promise student scholarship program is needed at all, to why UH West Oahu appears to some to be underused.

Donna Mercado Kim, chair of the Senate Higher Education committee, said during the joint briefing with the Senate Ways and Means Committee that the student population at the Kapolei campus is “disappointing. … We spent millions of dollars on expanding the campus and putting in these buildings, and they’re empty.”

Sen. Kurt Fevella said he wants to explore closing UH Manoa in favor of the Kapolei campus. “I think West Oahu is one of the most prestige and futuristic universities that’s going to be probably on this island,” Fevella said. He added that he would consider a bill to “academically bring everything to West Oahu because that’s where the growth is.”

UH President David Lassner responded that all of the university’s 10 campuses are still shifting after being 100% online for a long stretch in the COVID- 19 pandemic, but some portion of students from now on will always favor virtual learning. According to updated UH data, 53.2% of UH students systemwide are completely online, 26.3% have at least one online course, and 20.4% are completely in-person. “We know the numbers are not going to go back to (pre-pandemic) 2019. But we don’t know where they will be in between,” he said.

Meanwhile, wide differences stand between what UH had hoped for in its proposals to augment the roughly $1.1 billion operating budget for the 10-campus system, and Green’s budget submission to the Legislature.

The UH Board of Regents had requested additions totaling $56.3 million for fiscal year 2023-2024 and $59.4 million in 2024-2025.

Green’s submission exceeds UH’s, at $61 million and $61.4 million. But while his budget aligns with UH’s in some key areas, it ignores others.

UH’s and Green’s budgets both make a top priority of restoring state general funds to pre-pandemic levels for the Manoa, Hilo and West Oahu campuses, the John A. Burns School of Medicine and the UH system, at about $17 million per year.

They also agree that another top priority is continuation of the Hawai‘i Promise scholarship program for resident community-college students, plus expansion of the scholarships to UH’s four-year institutions at Manoa, Hilo and West Oahu. The Hawai‘i Promise program provides free in-state tuition for qualified UH community college students with unmet direct costs of education.

The program is helping thousands of students afford the community colleges, Lassner said, but they run into a wall when they want to transfer to the four-year campuses for a bachelor’s degree and face dramatically higher costs.

At the UH community colleges, full-time resident undergraduate tuition is around $1,572 a semester, while full-time resident undergraduate tuition is $5,652 a semester at UH Manoa and $3,836 a semester at UH Hilo and UH West Oahu.

Maintaining the Hawai‘i Promise program program for community college students would require $3.7 million each year, according to UH’s budget request. Expanding it to UH Manoa would cost $12.3 million a year; UH Hilo, $1.7 million; and UH West Oahu, $5 million. Green’s budget requested the same amounts.

But Senate Ways and Means Chair Donovan Dela Cruz said he doesn’t feel the Hawai‘i Promise program aligns with UH’s emphasis in its new strategic plan to provide more support for the jobs and industries the state needs. He said he would rather see UH place more emphasis on noncredit training programs that can quickly put people to work.

“We know of students who are maybe freshmen and sophomores at Manoa, but they’re currently taking core classes at community college because it’s cheaper. So why not try to promote that instead of us funding” more degree scholarships? Dela Cruz added.

UH also had asked for $262 million and $296 million in capital improvements, over half of those amounts intended to “renew, improve and modernize” aging buildings and infrastructure. Green’s budget proposes far less, at $117.5 million and $125 million.