Gov. Rick Snyder is pushing to reformulate the way public universities are granted funding, calling for a plan to align university performance rates with the amount of state money given to each university. Some MSU administrators are leery of the plan and its current lack of details, but university advocates say it could help Michigan’s higher education system if formulated in a certain way. Although state officials are keeping details hushed, the overall plan would create a formula to measure university performance using certain characteristics — possibly numbers such as graduation rates — that would factor into how much state funding a public university receives. “(Snyder) has asked the budget office to look at the funding formula,” said Kurt Weiss, a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget. “(But) there’s really nothing concrete we can share at this point.”
