Headed west, Floyd reflects on time at MU

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- The moving vans are packed. Nearly 2,000 miles away, the new job as president of Washington State University awaits.

For the past four-and-a-half years, Elson Floyd has served as the public face of higher education in Missouri.

In a farewell interview with the Associated Press, he proudly recounted a long list of accomplishments as president of the University of Missouri system -- but also challenged lawmakers to significantly bolster their support.

"Our public universities in this state are so woefully behind compared to other public institutions," he said Friday. "We need to make those investments."

By one recent measure, Missouri ranked 46th among states in per capita higher education funding -- and last among 10 Midwestern states -- with an average of $147.60 per resident.

After several consecutive years of budget cuts, legislators approved a 2 percent spending increase for higher education in the current fiscal year.

A tentative budget approved by the state Senate and awaiting House approval recommends a 4.2 percent increase in higher education spending in the coming fiscal year.

By contrast, Floyd pointed out, Washington state's Democratic-controlled legislature recently approved a 17 percent increase in higher education spending.

Political gains, losses

Floyd spent much of his tenure courting politicians in Jefferson City, including Republican Gov. Matt Blunt, who in January 2006 came to Columbia to announce his plans to sell the assets from Missouri's student-loan agency to finance a statewide campus building boom.

The original proposal included $87.5 million to help complete a $150 million health sciences research center next to University Hospital.

After objections by opponents of embryonic stem-cell research, subsequent versions of the construction package eliminated that project but included $31.2 million to relocate Ellis Fischel Cancer Center to the main Columbia campus and another $15 million pharmacy and nursing building at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

But both of those projects were eliminated from the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority plan recently approved by the state Senate -- a Republican response to objections raised by Sen. Chuck Graham of Columbia and Sen. Jolie Justus of Kansas City, the two Democrats most vocally opposed to Blunt's plan.

Asked if two campuses were "being punished" for the dissident lawmakers' actions, Floyd didn't waver.

"I don't think anyone can come to any other conclusion," he said.

Floyd cited steady enrollment growth, fundraising increases and a fiscal turnaround at the university's once money-losing health care system as among the top accomplishments since he was hired in January 2003.

He also reflected on the missed opportunities, including his proposal to add Northwest Missouri State University as the system's fifth campus.

"Perhaps it was too robust," he said of that and other ideas that never came to fruition. "If I had to do it over again, I would have slowed the pace (of change)."

Floyd begins work in Washington on May 20, but will leave Columbia today to spend several weeks in his native North Carolina, where his mother still lives.

University of Missouri curators recently appointed Gordon Lamb, a former president of Northeastern Illinois University, as the system's interim president while they search for Floyd's permanent replacement.