University endowment

If legislators wanted to know whether a matching scholarship program they approved last session would work, they got their answer last week in Orono. But now that they can see its success, they will be faced with the important question next session of what to do about it.

The Endowment Incentive Program is simple but effective. It tells private donors that if they donate to a University of Maine System university, their money will be matched dollar for dollar by the state. The money goes for academics – professorships, scholarships or endowed faculty positions – not new buildings or sports equipment. The commitment from taxpayers is hardly risky; 27 other states have used it effectively to build endowments and strengthen their universities.

To say lawmakers approved the scholarship program, however, is a little misleading. They approved it in name, but whittled the amount of matching dollars from $14 million to $100,000, to be distributed throughout the University of Maine System, meaning that the flagship campus received $37, 875. By any measure this is a modest start, so modest donors could have been excused for not wanting to give through it.

Fortunately, this didn’t happen. The program requires a university to obtain no more than a third of its private donations from a single donor. As an example of how successful the state incentive could be and how much more in private giving it could attract, with the help pf the University of Maine Foundation, UMaine had three donors ready to give when the token program went into effect July 1. These first donations came from Gordon I. and Dorothy B. Erikson, classes of ’43 and ’42, respectively, now living in Bar Harbor and West Boylston, Mass.; Richard W. and Shirley Lang Noyes, both ’51, of Rockland; and Frank E. Pickering, ’53, and his wife, Clara Pickering, of Danvers, Mass.

So now legislators know the program works, and many know that Chancellor Terry MacTaggart has asked for $10 million for it in his next budget, and no doubt some are aware that Maine is facing a potential shortfall in the next state budget of approximately $200 million.

Funding an expansion of the endowment will mean saying no to other worthy programs, but this hard choice often is what lawmaking is about. The incentive endowment will help more Maine students go to college, help universities attract the finest professors, help Maine as a state thrive in an economy that depends more and more on higher education and, subsequently, turns more and more often to universities for generating the jobs of the future.

Good jobs is not the only or even primary reason for universities to exist, but states that have succeeded economically have depended on them as never before to create these opportunities. Maine can too, but it must be willing to make large investments if it wants large results. The endowment program is an excellent way to do this.