Amount of budget cuts still unclear
“Budget Cut” is a word that has been incorporated into the vocabulary of students and faculty as of late, and leaves many wondering what it means for them, Raymond Coward, Utah State University Provost, said.
Coward said the legislature will make the cuts as fair as possible, distributing budget cuts equally to every state program.
“We are being asked to take our fair share in cuts. It wouldn’t be fair to say (the legislature) can’t cut from higher education, that instead they need to take cuts from the elderly, from the poor, from the disabled – it wouldn’t be fair to not take our share in budget cuts,” Coward said.
Mike Lyons, political science associate professor, said it’s hard to say what areas of the university will be most affected by the budget cuts.
“The university has already implemented the relatively easy cutbacks. We’re at the point where we are going to start losing student services and courses,” Lyons said.
Coward and Lyons both tried to elaborate on the implications of such a budget cut and define what it will mean for the student body and the faculty of USU.
“We have 4,000 employees on campus and some of them will have to be eliminated. A drastic cut may mean larger classes, fewer course offerings and less outside activities offered,” Coward said.
Lyons said, “We don’t know if there will be a reduction in the faculty. It may make larger classes and for larger classes that are harder for students to get into.”
Coward said neither the president or the provost will be single-handedly making changes at the university.
“The university is so big and complex, we try to allow the individual dean to make decisions for their specific units, we want to empower the people who have the responsibility for these units,” he said.
Lyons said many of the reductions will include student services being scaled back or simply eliminated. One such service is the USU press, Utah State’s publishing company, Michael Spooner, director of USU press, said.
“The university press has a national reputation for excellence, so when scholars, students and professors pick up a book , it perpetuates the name and enhances the reputation of a university,” Spooner said.
Utah State funds the salaries of those people who work for USU Press. Book sales pay for production and a small amount of the staffs’ salaries, Spooner said. If the budget cut hovers near the $30 million range, it is possible that the publishing company would be facing significant cuts in funding.
“The university has to look at units essential to degree programs – there is a long list of units they have to consider for potential cuts,” Spooner said.
Spooner said the publishing company is subsidized by the university, and even though they have made great strides to be cost effective, if asked to shut down, they would do so over the course of the next fiscal year.
However, Coward said any talk of being eliminated is all speculative.
“We don’t have such a list, we aren’t trying to be secretive – we are trying to be as transparent as possible. We don’t know what the numbers are yet, so we don’t have a list of things that are going to cut we can’t until we have the numbers,” he said.
Coward said University President Stan Albrecht is trying to be as sensitive as possible to the faculty at Utah State.
“The president of the university wants to keep it as strong as it can be. He will do this by making strategic cuts. The problem lies in a difference of what one thinks is strategic or not,” Coward said.
Many cuts in faculty will happen naturally and others are encouraged through incentive plans, Lyons said.
“Some reductions will happen simply by attrition, without anyone being fired. When faculty members retire and take job offers elsewhere, they simply won’t be replaced. That is why there are early retirement incentives,” Lyons said.
The early retirement incentives Lyons refers to are found in the voluntary separation incentive plan, Coward said.
“The voluntary separation incentive plan motivates people to either retire or seek jobs elsewhere while taking the settlement that we are offering them. We won’t know how many people have applied and been accepted into this program until March 20, when the application deadline is, but for every person who voluntarily separates, that’s potentially one less person that has to be eliminated,” he said.
USU took a 4 percent cut this fall and a 3.65 percent cut spring semester, but is still waiting to hear how much more it is going to have to take out of it’s budget for next fall, Coward said.
“We’re waiting for the other shoe to fall while the legislature is still contemplating where they are going to implement cuts.
The sooner we get the number the better, we want to be planning now. It takes time to enact the changes,” Coward said.
Lyons, who agrees with Coward, said it is hard to determine how the university will be impacted until they get specific numbers back.
“We won’t know how it is going to affect the university with budget cuts until the legislature knows where they stand, which they will know by the end of this session,” Lyons said.
Finding that number could be as early as March 12, when the legislative session ends, Coward said.
“We won’t know until March 12, and it may be longer still because the governor has said that if the legislature decides on the larger number, he will automatically veto it, making for a longer span of time until we know what our budget is,” Coward said.
The budget cuts, on which the legislature is currently deliberating, will incorporate the 7.65 percent cuts that took place over the past school year, Coward said.
“The cuts could be as low as 11.3 percent and as high as 19 percent. This includes the budget cuts that have already been implemented,” Coward said.
Percentages are hard for many to grasp without knowing what the entire budget holds for the university. Many students and faculty don’t understand the depth of the budget cuts, Coward said.
“The numbers are drastically different. If they decide on the 11.3 percent, that equates 18 million dollars – wait until you hear the other number: if the legislature decides to cut 19 percent of our budget, that’s 30 million dollars, a huge some of money,” he said. “The constraints we have on how to reach that number, once we get it, is huge.
Although changes are unavoidable, a change in quality is not possible, Coward said. The wait, however, is wearing on the faculty at Utah State, the fear of not knowing is getting to many of the professors, Spooner said.
“Being in limbo is very difficult, the moral on campus is very low, with good reason – it’s many people’s career, it’s what they’ve been doing for years and the idea of losing that is daunting,” Spooner said.
Coward said the fundamentals that make Utah State a great school, particularly the faculty and students, are what will pull it through difficult times.
“When you combine bright, passionate students with world-renowned faculty and scientists, you get success, and that is one thing you can’t take away from Utah State,” Coward said.
Although Coward is faced with handling the budget of the university, he said he sympathizes with his colleagues at the legislature.
“The legislature, by law, is charged with balancing the state budget. The state isn’t allowed to run a deficit like the federal government. Those folks down there are faced with enormous decisions,” he said.
Although the future of of the budget of the university is unsure, Coward said he is confident the strength that exists at Utah State will continue.
“This is not the end of the university. Frankly we may be a smaller university, because you can’t cut that much money and have it not effect us; however, we aren’t going to lose our strength. We are one of the best land grant universities in the nation and we will continue to be one of the best land grant universities in the nation,” Coward said.
-becka.turner@aggiemail.usu.edu
LC