Big Bill lays out his case

UVSC president William Sederburg has written a lengthy Op-Ed in this morning's Daily Herald spelling out his reasons for wanting to move to university status, and sheding some light on what UVU might look like. It is a good piece, and obviously folks at the capitol have been listening to Big Bill's spiel because it looks like progress is being made. This past Tuesday the Senate Education Committee gave their approval on SB90, a bill that will split 10.5 million bucks between the state's 9 colleges and universities with UVSC recieving the lion's share with $3 million in ongoing funding. In a Deseret Morning News article on Wednesday, Senate President John Valentine said he considerred the increase a "down payment" on UVSC's move to university status, with the money going toward more faculty and staff hires. The bill now moves on to debate in the full senate. Look for opposition from Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, who says the round dollar ammounts for each school sound fishy. The Pipeline expects the bill to pass, as it throws much needed funds at all 9 public schools.

Some of you may have caught the KSL story about SB90 which mentioned that Brigham Young University would also be getting $1 million. It appears that whoever wrote the copy, when they were adding up Utah's 9 public schools they forgot all about Weber State and so included BYU instead. We can forgive Mormon Church-owned KSL for being a little BYU-Centric, and Weber is easy to forget. But it did provide much fodder on KSL message boards as people wondered "Why in the hell is BYU getting state funds!"