Ball State's President Says It's Too Soon to Pay Colleges for Results. The Campus Building Wish List Already Tops $1.1 Billion.

Ball State University President Geoffrey Mearns. Photo: Ball State University, Office of the President (official university photo)

When they wrote the current state budget last year, Indiana lawmakers stopped paying the state's public colleges extra for getting students across the finish line. They had a reason: a dire revenue forecast. That forecast, the Indiana Capital Chronicle reported Friday, “later proved false.”

Now the state's Commission for Higher Education wants the results money back in the next two-year budget, and one of the schools that would be graded under it is pushing back. Ball State University President Geoffrey Mearns told the commission Thursday that the plan to restore outcomes-based performance funding is premature.

“I think we improve our chances of increasing our investment in higher education if we keep our requests simple,” Mearns said.

He made that case at the same meeting where Ball State and the other schools rehearsed the construction requests they plan to take to the State Budget Committee. Ball State's own list includes an $88 million overhaul of Bracken Library into what it calls a “21st Century learning commons,” plus a $90 million business-college building offered as the fallback if the library project is turned down.

Pay for degrees, or pay for buildings

Performance funding is a small slice of what Indiana spends on its colleges. It uses a formula to reward schools for outcomes such as on-time degrees. The commission unanimously approved a reworked version in July that pays a base amount for each qualifying credential earned by an Indiana resident and adds bonuses tied to affordability, access and jobs the state actually needs filled, according to Indiana Insight. Secretary for Education Katie Jenner said at the time that the update “ensures higher education is delivering the greatest value for students,” in the commission's own release.

That is about as conservative an idea as state budgeting gets: send tax dollars where the results are, and let schools that deliver earn more. A university president calling it badly timed, in the same breath as an $88 million request for one building, is an argument worth weighing in public.

Mearns has a case, and he made it plainly. He said lawmakers may not realize Ball State's state appropriation is roughly what it was 20 years ago, that tuition there has not outpaced inflation, and that Indiana ranks 46th in the nation in higher education funding, the Capital Chronicle reported. The last budget cut higher education by about 6% from fiscal 2025 and set aside nothing for construction.

What the presidents brought to the table

Thursday was a practice round. The schools presented in turn, Purdue, Vincennes, Ball State, Indiana State, Southern Indiana, Indiana University and Ivy Tech, per the meeting agenda, so the commission could give feedback before the real pitch to lawmakers. Here is what the Capital Chronicle reported they plan to ask for:

Indiana University, $663 million in capital projects. Purdue, $100 million toward a proposed 13-floor health science and engineering hub with offices, classrooms, dining, retail and student housing. Ivy Tech, $84.5 million to replace outdated buildings in Terre Haute and $78 million for its Evansville campus, plus a new $13 million line item for roofs, HVAC and plumbing. Southern Indiana, $54 million for a biomedical lab and applied engineering center. Indiana State, $47 million to renovate Holmstedt Hall and retire Root Hall. Vincennes, $40 million for renewal and consolidation work. IU also wants a new $1.3 million line item for an entrepreneurial lab, matched by the school.

Add up the capital requests, counting Ball State's library and not its fallback, and the total comes to about $1.15 billion. That figure is the Hoosier Enquirer's own arithmetic from the Capital Chronicle's list, not a number any school or the commission has published.

Credit belongs where it is earned, too. All of Indiana's public colleges froze tuition for a second straight year in 2026. Purdue's president said its tuition has not changed since 2012, saving families a collective $2.5 billion, and that 67% of its students graduate debt-free. Ivy Tech, the cheapest option in the state at $5,154 a year, says 88% of its students leave with no college debt. “We're in an era of crippling debt all across this nation for college students, especially college students who leave with no credentials,” Ivy Tech President Martin Pollio said.

Those are exactly the kinds of numbers a results-based formula is built to reward. Schools that can show them should welcome being paid on them.

Flush again, and the line is forming

The money picture that justified the cuts has flipped. The commission expects state reserves to reach $5.2 billion next July, the Capital Chronicle reported, and the State Budget Agency says general fund collections ran $97.3 million ahead of forecast in the first three months of the fiscal year, WOWO reported, with corporate taxes leading the way.

Jenner still expects a “very, very tough session.” She said her talks with the presidents about countering the idea that a college degree isn't worth pursuing kept leading back to the same place: outcomes, and showing them to lawmakers. “It's an investment, but it's also outcomes that we're getting for Hoosier students,” she said.

The commission takes the simplified formula to the State Budget Committee next month. Lawmakers will decide how much each credential is worth, if anything, and how much of a billion-dollar building list Hoosier taxpayers should carry. Mearns wants the request kept simple. The simplest version of all is the one the commission is already proposing: pay for the degrees.

Written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers.