LINCOLN — The president of the University of Nebraska system is responding to the legislature's funding recommendations.

The Unicameral's appropriations committee this week opted to increase NU's general fund appropriation by 1.25%.

While that's a significant change from the governor's recommendation of a 2% cut, it's still short of what the 3.5% bump the regents requested last summer.

NU President Dr. Jeff Gold told NCN that while he's grateful the Unicameral isn't looking to cut funding, he still thinks more can be done.

“We look at this as part of a process," Gold said. "As I like to say to folks, it’s a nine-inning ballgame here and we’re barely through the second or into the third inning. There’s a lot of work that has to be done between now and the 70th day when the budget is issued by the committee.”

Gold says the uncertainty of federal funding combined with the ever-increasing cost of doing business as a university, makes it important to find a way to avoid passing those costs onto NU students as much as possible.

“We’ve got to address this," Gold said. "The more we can do to share these expenses with state taxpayer dollars, the less we’re going to have to do to increase tuition and hopefully maintain affordability of higher education across the state.”

Gold said the university estimates each dollar invested in general appropriations is returned to Nebraska ten-fold.

The appropriations committee also voted this week to restore $3 million in biomedical research for NU and the university is also getting $50 million over each of the next two years from the state's tobacco settlement fund for the $2.1 billion Project Health facility being constructed in Omaha.