During the Missouri S&T Faculty Senate meeting, President Michael Schulz warned his fellow faculty members the coming years could be difficult ones for the university in terms of finances.

“The biggest concern is really fiscal year 2012 and beyond,” Schulz said.

That is when Schulz is predicting the effect of funds from the Stimulus package that have been helping support higher education will be gone.

One figure Schulz used to illustrate his point was a system wide increase in salaries at about 4 percent, which according to him, would end up costing the system $38 million.

It would also require an 8 percent increase in tuition if the University of Missouri System used tuition solely to fund the increases.

“The system recognizes that salaries need to be competitive,” Schulz said, adding that the impression he had from the Board of Curators was they are becoming more sympathetic to that view.

Where the legislature goes this coming year in terms of higher education funding has yet to be seen, but Provost Dr. Warren Kent Wray said he believed Gov. Jay Nixon will try and protect higher education from cuts as much as he could.

The Faculty Senate also voted to reauthorize The Information, Technology and Computing committee to monitor existing security procedures at S&T and report to the Senate.

Reauthorization came in response to the adoption of changes to the Collected Rules and Regulations Acceptable Use Policy by the Board of Curators.

The changes concerned the system’s ability to access electronic information of faculty members if it is for a “legitimate business use,” according to Rules Procedures and Agenda Committee chairman Greg Gelles, something to which the Faculty Senate previously raised concerns about.