Senate Appropriations Chairman Dan Brown on Wednesday urged committee members to find more money in the state budget for higher education.
"I think that we understand that higher ed is in crisis mode (and) the governor's (recommendations) are just that," Brown said during a committee hearing. "I challenge this committee (to) find $68 million in the budget" for the University of Missouri's four-campus system.
Gov. Eric Greitens' proposed budget for the business year that begins July 1 cuts state higher education funding by about 10 percent.
Shawn Strong, president of State Technical College of Missouri, Linn, told the committee: "If the state continues to cut support and we don't hit some very lofty enrollment goals, I may be faced with the difficult choice of closing academic programs."
Greitens and others have suggested Missouri's colleges and universities have too many administrators.
Strong said: "State Tech does not have non-essential staff to eliminate; we have half the administrators as the national average."
Mun Choi, president of the four-campus University of Missouri system, said: "During the past two years, we've seen an $80 million cut to our (University System) appropriations and that's putting us in a very precarious situation."
University of Central Missouri President Charles Ambrose - who this year also chairs the state's Council on Public Higher Education (COPHE) - told the committee: "In the year 2000, 65 percent of most of our institutions' revenues came from the state of Missouri (and) 35 percent was generated by tuition.
"Today, 65 percent of our revenues are tuition, and 35 percent" comes from the state's budget.
COPHE represents all 14 four-year college campuses in the state, with their 154,000 students and total $2.4 billion in expenditures, Ambrose explained.
He said Missouri's public colleges and universities generally support state Sen. Caleb Rowden's proposal to modify a 2007 law that limits tuition increases.
With some exceptions, that law prohibits the state's universities from raising tuition by more than the most recent consumer price index (CPI) increase - unless they get a waiver from the Higher Education Department.
Rowden's bill would change that limit to following the CPI plus 10 percent, "in years where state appropriations, core appropriations, are cut."
And he would eliminate the waiver.
"We're in an environment where we are asking more of our higher education institutions," Rowden, R-Columbia, told the committee. "We're asking them to do more. We're asking them to think ahead.
"We're asking them to do big things and think in the long term - which I think is a perfectly reasonable and acceptable thing for us to do. But in doing that, we are also, in the present environment, giving them far less money to do so, and we have handcuffed them in their ability to adjust to the market."
He hopes the Legislature will support his changes, but he also hopes lawmakers will continue to improve higher education funding so the provisions of his bill never would be triggered.
Both Rowden and the college leaders reminded lawmakers that constant increases to their tuition rates would make the schools less competitive - but they want the flexibility offered by Rowden's proposal.
Former state Sen. Gary Nodler, R-Joplin, sponsored the 2007 bill.
"By this act, we will do more to transform the higher education system to empower it to compete in the 21st century than anything that's been done in Missouri in my lifetime," he said 11 years ago.
But, Rowden said Wednesday: "I believe (the 2007 law) was flawed from the beginning (because) it really was a 'big government' solution.
"We effectively said in the state Legislature that we didn't trust college administrators, presidents (and) boards of curators to make decisions that were in the best interests of their institutions and students."
Brown agreed.
"I think colleges and universities are smart enough to price their services, and if they overprice, they'll pay the price," he said. "To me, no other business do we tell them, 'You can't raise your fees.'"
Under the terms of the 2007 law, Missouri Southern State University President Alan Marble told the lawmakers the Joplin school has "the lowest tuition per FTE (full-time equivalent student) and the second-lowest appropriation per FTE, and for the most part, we are helpless to adjust either one."
Clif Smart, president of Missouri State University, Springfield, added: "We have 6,000 more students than in 2001, but we're getting $4 million less than in 2001.
"We're running out of things to cut."
Choi added, if lawmakers approve Greitens' latest proposed cuts, Missouri schools would have the same buying power as they had in 1998 - but on average, with more students than they had 20 years ago.
"When we look at our bordering states," he said, "Nebraska has a $400 per capita spending in higher ed, and Arkansas, $335. Compare that to the state of Missouri - we're at $170 per capita.
"Because of the investment that these border states are making, we're finding that many Missouri students are leaving the state to go to other universities in the border states, because they have made an investment in higher education.
"And that outflow creates a brain-drain that takes away from economic development."