Iowa's three regent university presidents met with members of the Legislature's education appropriations subcommittee Monday afternoon to summarize their appropriation increase requests for the year that begins July 1 and answer legislators' questions. Most of the questions related to compliance with state law and recent federal executive orders.
President Wendy Wintersteen's request mirrored her September request to the Iowa Board of Regents: $11.8 million in new funds for seven Iowa State initiatives that focus on enhancing Iowa's rural economy and supporting Iowa businesses.
The seven requests for additional state support in fiscal year 2026 are:
Enhancing Iowa's rural economy
1. Incremental operations funding for the Agricultural Experiment Station ($3.75 million) and Cooperative Extension ($1 million) to help maintain the state's agricultural competitiveness and explore opportunities for growth. She noted that ag-related businesses contribute about 22% of the state's gross domestic product. Three proposed focus areas are: workforce development and entrepreneurship, digital and precision livestock and crops, agricultural economics policy and training.
2. New support ($4 million) to open four manufacturing hubs in partnership with community colleges and create new pathways for students and manufacturing employees to complete in-demand four-year and advanced degrees. Funding would upgrade existing training centers with advanced technologies and update and align curricula, led by the Center for Industrial Research and Service and the colleges of Engineering and Agriculture and Life Sciences. The name for the concept is MakeIowa: Advancing our Manufacturing Pipeline.
3. New support ($1 million) for scholarships to assure in-state College of Veterinary Medicine tuition rates for up to 10 students/year accepted into the ISU Production Animal-Veterinary Early Acceptance Program established in 2023 -- a novel way to recruit more veterinarians to serve in rural Iowa. Upon graduation, the scholarship would be forgiven if a veterinarian worked for five years as a food animal veterinarian in rural Iowa.
4. Incremental support ($250,000) for livestock disease research, to leverage even more external research funding and combat threats to the state's livestock industry. Every $1 the Iowa Livestock Health Advisory Council invests leverages $10 in external funding.
Supporting Iowa businesses
5. Incremental operations support ($1.5 million) for the new Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory (VDL), particularly its new Biosafety Level 2 facility. Current appropriations and the lab's fee income can't cover this expense. About 16% of the VDL's operating budget comes from state appropriations (the rest is test fees), compared to an average 48% at other VDLs. This is the largest food animal-focused VDL in the nation, with 1.6 million tests annually.
6. New support ($250,000) for staff and operations in entrepreneurship, for example, competition prizes, travel to national conferences and competitions for students and professional mentoring for faculty.
7. Top-off funds ($36,005) to reach a total of $3 million annually ($1 million each) for the three state bioscience platforms based at Iowa State (biobased products, vaccines and immunotherapeutics, and digital and precision agriculture), getting to the funding goal established in 2017 when the initiative launched.
Value of an Iowa State degree
Wintersteen told legislators that 93% of the spring 2023 graduating class was employed or continuing in school within six months. Among those graduates, 44% graduated without any debt. And a lot of those graduates remained in Iowa:
- 65% of resident students (2,343 students)
- 24% of non-resident students (458)
- 31% of international students (175)
She referenced a Wall Street Journal article that said graduates from public universities need to earn at least $50,000/year, on average, in their first decade after college for their degrees to pay for themselves. She said Iowa State graduates have a great return on their investment when measuring salaries.
ISU degree pays off
|
Post-graduation |
Average salary |
|
Year 1 |
$45,891 |
|
Year 5 |
$63,370 |
|
Year 10 |
$81,082 |
