Cashing in on Referendum C: business schools expect minimal benefit from tax-refund money.

• Author: Cada, Chryss

The Referendum C checks are in the mail, but deans at the state's biggest business schools aren't exactly waiting by the mailbox for their arrival. "The amount of state funding we receive is so minimal that the only impact we expect (from Ref. C funding) is that there won't be further cuts," said Dennis Ahlburg, dean of the University of Colorado at Boulder Leeds School of Business. "There will be benefit to the campus as a whole, but any trickle down will dry up before it reaches us."

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Funds from the referendum, which will dedicate up to $3.7 billion in tax refunds to higher education, transportation and health care, are expected to be allocated first to the programs with the greatest need. "There are two parts of campus, those dependent on funding and those that are exporters of dollars," Ahlburg said. "Business schools are typically one of the cash cows on campus."

With only 5.3 percent of CU's funding coming from the state, income is primarily generated from tuition. "Our undergraduate class is about twice the size of our competitors and our funding is about half to a quarter of that of schools in our aspiration set," the business school dean said. "Yet we're a flagship school and we're expected to provide a world-class education."

Ahlburg arrived in Boulder about a year ago and said he was shocked by what he found. Classes were overbooked just like airplane flights: with the hope that not everybody would show up. "We just couldn't make any more cuts; there were more students than seats," he said. "After seeing the situation I saw two options: build more room or shut the school down."

Putting into practice what they teach their own students, CU and Colorado State University in Fort Collins have sought alternative sources of funding to survive the state's recent budget crunch. Since state law holds them to no greater than a 2.5 percent tuition increase, generating new sources of income calls for some creative financing. In 1967, when construction began on Leed's current $2.4 million building, the school received funding from the Colorado state legislature, the federal government and private donors. The current $35 million renovation and expansion will receive no funds from the state or federal government. The addition of 65,000 square feet will be paid for with $17.5 million from student fees, with the remainder of the funding coming from private donations.

Learning from their "competitors," Colorado State...