Students walk across McKeldin Mall on the University of Maryland, College Park’s campus. (Photo by Sam Gauntt/Maryland Matters)

by Sam Gauntt, Maryland Matters
July 24, 2025

Maryland Matters is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: [email protected].

The University System of Maryland’s Board of Regents voted Friday to approve a fiscal 2026 budget that is 7% smaller than last year’s allocation, as well as tuition increases of up to 5% and fee hikes up to 10%.

The almost $8 billion budget, already approved by Gov. Wes Moore and the General Assembly, will trim operating costs while aiming to increase revenue to make up for $155 million in reduced funding. These reductions follow an almost 4% cut to the University System last year.

“At this extraordinary time, our universities must make some difficult decisions as they close their budget gaps,” University System Chancellor Jay Perman said Friday.

On Thursday, Perman took the unusual step of sending a video message to more than 40,000 faculty and staff members across the system, apologizing for the coming budget cuts but telling staff to brace for them. He replayed that video for the board on Friday.

While university administrators will first seek to generate new revenue and will protect employees from cuts as much as possible, the “sheer size of the cut we’re absorbing means that, for some universities, personnel actions cannot be taken off the table,” Perman said in the video.

At their previous meeting in May, the regents approved a resolution that allows presidents of individual campuses to implement furloughs and temporary salary reductions as part of their budget plans.

Senior Vice Chancellor for Administration and Finance Ellen Herbst said 60% of the system’s operating costs are personnel-related. Two-thirds of the system’s employees are funded by state support, Herbst said, while about a quarter are funded by federal grants and contracts.

She said though universities are looking to low-impact actions to address personnel costs first, such as eliminating vacancies and allowing “natural attrition” to reduce payrolls, those actions alone may not be enough.

“We will take these actions with great care, but we will need to take some further actions,” Herbst said. “We cannot address the shortfall in state funding without addressing personnel costs.”

Patrick Moran, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Maryland Council 3, which represents more than 6,000 University System employees, said the union and system need to work together to defend their shared values and protect employees as they face “very real and critical threats.” Moran said the system must evaluate its use of costly vendors, reduce reliance on contractual employees, and listen to feedback from staff on how things can be better run.

“All of these things can be done before deciding to make devastating cuts to your personnel, especially those on the front lines,” he said.

Katherine Wasdin, a representative of the University of Maryland, College Park’s American Association of University Professors chapter, expressed the importance of shared governance as the system makes its budget decisions.

“Faculty and university senates must be involved in making these difficult budgetary decisions, as well as in how to respond to changing federal policies on education and research,” Wasdin, an associate professor of classics, said. “It is thus imperative that all parts of the USM system promote the involvement of faculty in university management, rather than trying to thwart it.”

Under the budget plan, the University System will receive 29% of its funding from state appropriations, while 27% will come from tuition and fees. The next largest contribution comes from restricted funds, which consist mostly of federal contracts and grants, and will cover about 24% of the budget.

In addition to the reduction in state funding, the system estimates that the federal government’s significant cuts to research grants and contracts could cost up to $150 million across its campuses, Herbst said.

To increase revenue to offset the losses in funding, tuition will increase across the system by 2-4% for in-state residents. The University of Maryland, College Park will see the highest increase at 4%, while the rest will see increases of 3% or less.

Tuition for nonresident undergrads will increase by 5% at Towson and UMBC, and 2% at the system’s other institutions.

Student fees, such as housing, dining and parking, will see bigger increases. Housing will see increases from 2% at Towson to 10% at Bowie State University, while board fee increases range from 2.2% at Salisbury University to 10.5% at College Park.

Bowie State University and the College Park campus will also raise parking fees by 3.8% and 5%, respectively.

The regents also voted Friday to approve extending the University of Maryland Global Campus’s contract with UMGC Ventures, the university’s former in-house information technology services unit which it turned into an independent business.

The online university will spend $69 million on the 18-month contract extension while it works to reintegrate Ventures and AccelerEd, a subsidiary of Ventures, back into the university. The reintegration comes after an August 2024 audit from the state’s Office of Legislative Audits that found the spin-offs were too costly and appeared to bypass the school’s normal procedures.

Herbst said that staff across the University System are continuously drawing up contingency plans for budget scenarios they could face later in the year, such as lower-than-expected enrollment, further federal funding cuts or change to eligibility for federal financial aid.

Pell Grants, the system’s largest source of financial aid, covered more than $204 million in aid for about 45,000 students in fiscal 2024. More than 58,000 students in total received some form of federal student aid, Herbst added, and any significant eligibility changes could potentially impact enrollment numbers.

“All we know for sure about budgets is they’re simply a plan, and then the year starts and we have to actually manage,” she said. “This year will probably prove to be more challenging than many.”

by Sam Gauntt, Maryland Matters
June 13, 2025

Maryland Matters is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: [email protected].

Even as changes to the state’s education reform act were being signed into law Tuesday, state officials and advocates were already talking about changes they want to see next in the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future.

The debate over House Bill 504 – the Excellence in Maryland Public Schools Act – was among the sharpest in the 2025 General Assembly session, with the governor and lawmakers, particularly the House, split over changes to the expensive plan that were needed as the state grappled with a $3 billion budget deficit.

But Gov. Wes Moore (D) on Tuesday, standing next to Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) and House Speaker Adrienne Jones (D-Baltimore County), thanked them, several lawmakers and education officials for their work on the bill, which passed on the last day of the 90-day session last month.

“While this legislation is an important step forward, it cannot be the last step that we take on education,” Moore said at Tuesday’s bill signing ceremony. “While we refine our strategy to ensure we aren’t just spending more, but that we’re spending smart, I will continue to use every option available to me as governor to improve our schools and deliver for our students.”

The final bill did not contain some of the deepest cuts that were offered to try rein in spending on the 10-year, multibillion-dollar Blueprint plan. But it also did not include some of the flexibility for local schools boards that some administrators had been pushing for.

State Board of Education President Joshua Michael, who attended the bill signing ceremony, said the governor and legislature helped to improve the Blueprint plan through their negotiations. But Michael said it would have helped if they had included funding for a teacher coaching program, a recommendation made by a nonprofit’s report last month on reading.

“We’re pleased that the legislature authorized the program, but we need resources,” Michael said. “We’re going to continue to press forward with the tools that we have around the literacy policy and the math policy, and we’re going to work with the legislature and the governor to see what we can do in the future.”

Moore in January proposed a Blueprint reform plan that called for a four-year pause in the expansion of teacher “collaborative time” – hours when teachers are not in the classroom but are planning for meeting. State education leaders have said at least 12,000 new teachers would have to be hired to fully implement collaborative time. The governor also proposed a decrease in funding for special education, low-income and English language learners, and keeping funding for community schools – those that receive concentration of poverty grants – at current levels for two years.

Lawmakers pushed back hard against reductions in funding that would affect those students in most need. Legislators were ultimately able to preserve most of the funding for students in need, and advocates praised lawmakers like Del. Vanessa Atterbeary (D-Howard) for not backing down over funding for underserved students.

Atterbeary, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee that assesses education policy, said Tuesday the legislature may need to assess education funding in the near future, especially “with the climate” in the federal government led by President Donald Trump (R).

“Why should we say to our most underserved communities, to our minority communities that at the national level when our president is saying, ‘We don’t care about you,’ and WE’RE going to double down and cut their funding. No. Absolutely not,” said Atterbeary, who didn’t attend Tuesday’s ceremony.

“I couldn’t do that as a mother. I couldn’t do that as a woman. I couldn’t do that as an African American and I absolutely couldn’t do it as a legislator,” she said. “Ultimately, the legislation in terms of that aspect passed as we wanted.”

‘Give faith’

Advocates such as Riya Gupta remain pleased the Blueprint bill passed, but she said more money is needed for mental health, behavioral and other wraparound services for students in the upcoming 2025-26 school year.

Under the Consortium on Coordinated Supports, which is part of the Blueprint plan, the governor proposed to fund those services at $130 million for next fiscal year. The House proposed just $40 million, but ultimately Senate language was adopted that allocated $70 million next year and $100 million a year thereafter.

Gupta, interim director for the advocacy group Strong Schools Maryland, which focuses on protecting the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, said Monday that the state cannot make a habit of analyzing Blueprint funding, as it did this year.

She also said parents, students, advocates and community leaders should be given ample opportunities to become involved in any policy discussions for next year’s legislative session.

“We have to bring them to the table,” she said. “We have to give the faith to listen to their ideas that are also in line with the vision of the Blueprint.”

Sen. Mary Beth Carozza (R-Lower Shore), who voted against the bill last month, agrees more local input is needed. Carozza said she will continue to push for recommendations offered in December by a superintendent’s association.

Several of the association’s proposals became legislation sponsored by Sen. Karen Lewis Young (D-Frederick), and later amendments offered by Carozza, but none of the proposals advanced beyond a Senate committee.

“There were too many missed opportunities to do more on Blueprint revisions and to give our local school systems the flexibility they need…” Carozza said Monday.

Carozza and other Republican lawmakers expressed concerns about future funding for the multibillion-dollar plan, now in its third year. Some have said future budgets will not only affect school systems, but also county governments, which may not be able to pay for increases in transportation, special education or other programs.

Although the Blueprint is funded in the next two years, the subsequent years are slated to shift to the state’s general fund with projected deficits up to $3 billion by fiscal 2030.

“Which translates to new and even bigger taxes,” Carozza said. “We cannot move forward with the Blueprint by doing major cost shifts to the counties.”

by William J. Ford, Maryland Matters
May 7, 2025

Maryland Matters is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: [email protected].