Ibuprofen retailers across the Columbia metro area are breathing a sigh of relief after a convoluted performance funding proposal forced all involved to make a run on headache relief medication the past six weeks.

Credit to graphics gal Rachel Rice at the Columbia Missourian for putting together this visual.

But all is calm now, as it seems that the train that left the station weeks ago is well out of sight now — the performance measures faculty members hotly debated for several weeks made it through Wednesday’s general faculty meeting without a scratch.

Faculty seemed pretty apathetic to performance funding in way that had to be expected, I guess, after the bleak warning MU Budget Director Tim Rooney issued before the presentation of the performance measures.

Missourian columnist (and former executive editor) George Kennedy said it best when he said, “Tim didn’t hesistate to wipe the smiles off our faces.” Rooney briefly, matter-of-fact-ly explained we definitely won’t be getting any new funding next year — in fact, he said we could be facing a 5% decrease.

Krawitz went one step farther, claiming we shouldn’t expect new funding the year after, either — or the year after, or the year after, or the year after.

And since performance funding measures would only apply to new funding, Krawitz urged faculty not to fear if Mizzou isn’t adequately represented by the proposed measures because they’ll never get used without new funding.

I tried to encapsulate that in my most recent article about the model:

Laughter rattled through Chamber Auditorium in the MU Student Center as Nikki Krawitz, University of Missouri System vice president for finance and administration, answered one short but important question about the funding model.

The question: Does this make any difference whatsoever?

“The short answer?” Krawitz said as laughter subsided. “No.”

Not to discredit the importance of the discussion about performance funding measures — or the hard work Krawitz, her task force, COPHE and college administrators across the state have done — but if we really can’t expect new funding to be used with the performance measures, did we all just waste our time?

It’s a silly hypothetical question but, how much money could we have raised if every minute we had talked about performance funding over the last year was put into fundraising efforts? And though that question oversimplifies the issue, it gets to the heart of it — at what point could (should?) we have decided to ditch performance funding, knowing it would be moot with the funding crisis we’ve got now?

Could the UM System have prioritized differently after abandoning performance funding? Focused on more pertinent issues?

After following the model this fall and getting to sit down and talk with Krawitz about the ins-and-outs of the idea — including the grim funding outlook — it just seems to me like she had, and still has, plenty more viable and important things to work on for this university.

So why waste her time on an under-funded, disliked, already twice-failed performance funding idea?

What is performance funding? What does it mean for the university? What does it mean for the quality of public higher education throughout the state? How many hundreds of questions could you come up with when you start to get down into the details of a performance funding model?

It’s complicated, OK. And for the record, performance can most accurately be summed up in the following (Hint: read aloud as quickly as possible):

“At the August (Higher Education) Summit, the Governor suggested a performance funding system under which any state appropriations above the previous year’s base level would be allocated to each university based upon that university’s performance on five measures. Four of the measures would be common to all COPHE institutions and one measure would be independently selected by each university.”

Duh. I mean, what did you think it would be?

Unfortunately, it seems that the members of MU’s Faculty Council may be in the same boat. At their meeting last week, council members grilled UM System VP Nikki Krawitz about details of the plan and had some harsh words for the model’s seemingly total disregard of several major facets of MU’s academic mission. (On that note, Krawitz admitted the model is tailored toward the Gov.’s goal of increasing folks with degrees, not the one land-grant, research institution in the state.)

My understanding was that Krawitz had presented the model to the council members with the intent of fielding suggestions, not defending the model against heavy criticism.

In the heat of it, Krawitz essentially said the train is leaving the station, and MU is on board whether we like it or not.

We have a choice: we can either make suggestions about measures that we can use, or we can talk about all the reasons we can’t use measures. But if we want funding, I’m telling you, you better come up with some measures.

After the fact it occurred to me that in the hour and a half Faculty Council meeting, council members had only provided a handful of suggestions and the frustration was palpable. Which got me thinking: if a group of the most informed, intelligent faculty members still had burning questions and concerns after an hour and a half — how will a full general faculty meeting (where all faculty are invited to voice their opinion) fare?

My hunch is that without more clarity, the meeting might go down much like the last council meeting. So it begs the question, instead of my sloppy, confusing narrative about the funding model is there a way we can visually walk people through how the model will work?

The idea is simply to make it simple. Definitions of terms. Context regarding how the performance model will not affect core funding, only additional allocations to public institutions. An equation to show what information the model considers and how it spits out a number based on a school’s performance in those categories.

It’s still a work in progress, but it’s an idea I’d like to see through before next Wednesday’s general faculty meeting. And the Missourian has an obligation to try to provide some clarity on such a complex issue, especially after hearing the questions and concerns raised at last week’s council meeting.