The Oklahoma House of Representatives passed the 2025 fiscal year budget on Thursday, which allocates roughly $444 million less towards higher education than the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education initially requested from the state.
The spending plan passed the Senate 31-11 on Tuesday. Sen. Mary Boren (D-Norman), said she voted against the general appropriation bill for the 2025 budget, which allocated a total of $1,023,746,221 to the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education. The agency requested a total of $1,448,620,193.
Boren said her vote reflects her belief the budget agreement doesn’t benefit students, whose education is mainly funded by private entities such as themselves, parents or donors.
“In all of this money talk, there's nothing there that says that there was an intentional effort to reduce student loan debt or reliance upon student loans,” Boren said.
The Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education will have gained an increase of roughly 2% in funding compared to the last fiscal year. However, Boren said that funding is mostly earmarked for specific projects and programs and additionally doesn’t match inflation, which has been close to 4% all year.
“The cost of higher ed in Oklahoma, the overall cost of providing higher education in Oklahoma through public universities, only 30% of that cost is being met by state funds,” Boren said. “30% is being paid by private individuals or nonprofits, foundations raising money, that kind of stuff.”
The spending plan does establish a deferred maintenance fund that will help with backlogged campus infrastructure funds, Boren said.
Legislative leaders agreed on the $12.47 billion 2025 budget agreement last week for the next fiscal year beginning July 1.
The spending plan, once enacted, will allocate $350 million towards state-owned properties with 45% going to state buildings, 45% to higher education and 10% to state parks.
In a Friday press release, the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education expressed their gratitude for the multi-year funding for maintenance at public, higher education institutions.
“We thank our legislators and Gov. Stitt for investing in Oklahoma’s future, including a substantial investment to meet deferred maintenance needs at our colleges and universities,” State Regents’ chair Jack Sherry said in the release. “The state system’s FY25 budget directly aligns with our priorities – to offer an exceptional higher education opportunity at an affordable cost while producing the graduates required to meet our state’s most pressing workforce needs.”
According to the release, the State Regents’ institutional operating allocations for the 2025 fiscal year include continuing targeted investments in workforce development initiatives in fields including engineering, computer science, nursing, other STEM disciplines and teacher education.
There were extra dollars in the budget this year, according to Boren, and Gov. Kevin Stitt and House Speaker Charles McCall (R-Atoka) wanted to spend it on an income tax reduction. The final agreement does not include a reduction in the personal income tax. Still, the Senate held to its February decision to eliminate the state’s 4.5% sales tax on groceries as the session's major tax cut.
According to the release, the State Regents received $19.9 million in state appropriations, which is a 1.99% increased investment by legislators and the Governor since last year.
The State Regents will consider proposed operating budgets at the June 27 regents meeting, according to the release.
According to Boren, the OU Health and Sciences Center received an increase in funding for Medicare and Medicaid and expanding psych residency slots, however, the money for this is not included in the allocations for the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education.
OU will also receive an $80 million loan covering roughly half the funding for a new engineering laboratory and another $80 million loan to pay for roughly half the cost of building a new wet laboratory at OU, which is used for analyzing and testing drugs, chemicals and other types of biological matter.
These labs will be located on the Norman campus and are meant for undergraduate students enrolled in biology, chemistry and similar lab sciences.
According to Boren, the $160 million for the OU labs will come from the Legacy Capital Financing Fund as a loan to OU to be paid back over 20 years.
The general appropriations budget bill for the 2024 fiscal year put forward roughly $1 billion towards Regents for Higher Education. This year, the state allocated roughly $20 million more than last year to the Regents for Higher Education, which Boren said ends up being a flat rate increase that does not account for the number of students wanting to enter higher education.
“We've had a growth of students so if you do flat budgets and you have an increase in students, that's a decrease in funding,” Boren said.
OU’s class of 2027 marked the third consecutive class to break the record for the highest number of incoming students at the university. The class of 2027’s size marks a 10% increase in new students from last year’s freshman class.
The budget agreement focuses on putting dollars into deferred maintenance and infrastructure needs, providing to eliminate the sales tax on groceries and providing for increases to long-term care provider rates and funds to reduce the waiting list for CareerTech programs.
According to the Tulsa World, appropriations amount to 5.39% less than what was appropriated last year and the plan includes an overall 2.2% increase in spending for state agencies.
This story was edited by Ana Barboza. Avery Avery copy edited this story.
