Hall to announce fall budget March 10
Utah State University President Kermit Hall said the university may have no other choice than to eliminate programs, reorganize colleges and reduce personnel if the Utah Legislature continues to cut its budget.
In order to fulfill its mission as a research university, Hall said USU may end up with fewer associate degrees and fewer applied technology programs.
“If the [budget] cuts are severe enough then we have no other choice than to look at addressing [reorganizations].”
President Hall also said he has asked Provost Stan Albrecht to study
“combinations that might be to the intellectual and academic advantage of the university,” Hall said. “We’re at the position now where there may be some programs that we could eliminate but if the size of the budget cuts that are before us are continued we’ll have to look at eliminating personnel (probably professional and classified employees).”
Albrecht has been meeting with faculty focus groups and has been asked to provide a set of recommendations by April 1.
John DeVilbiss, director for Public Relations at USU, said when the university looks for ways to reduce expenditures “generally speaking, any programs in any of the colleges that are ‘applied tech’ in nature are in the crosshairs.”
USU’s Executive Council met last Wednesday to review proposals from deans and vice-presidents on how to deal with budget reductions. They will meet again next week to present a ‘white paper’ that will “communicate to the campus community as a whole the general principles and directions we’re taking in response to losing between $14 million and $16 million out of our budget,” Hall said.
The first purpose for the meeting was “to put the university in a position that when we find out what the budget is, we’re prepared to deal with it as opposed to simply reacting, he said.
The university will know by Wednesday at midnight when the Legislative session ends what it will have to deal with, Hall said. Up until then, they won’t be sure how bad the cuts will be. “[The Legislature] is like a bad mystery novel,” he said. “All the action happens on the last three pages.
Hall said he has been working daily with the University of Utah to lobby the Legislature for the last month and a half. “We’ve been able to stem some of the flow” of the cuts, he said. Hall said he anticipates additional dollars to higher education because of their work.
DeVilbiss said the university could be looking at anywhere from a 2.5 percent cut to a 4.5 percent cut in its budget. A further cut “would have been a catastrophe for the university. Right now we’re just in the disaster mode because we’ve tapped out all we can in terms of our operating dollars,” DeVilbiss said.
The university is not looking at losing faculty members, DeVilbiss said, but professional staff and classified employees such as secretaries, office assistants, and custodians could be at risk. There has been a hiring freeze at the university since summer 2001, he said.
Hall said, “There are other institutions in the state [such as Bridgerland and Weber State] that can provide some of the training that we’re doing at the associate degree level. It may well make sense for us, in light of that, to have those institutions take on a larger role in one that we have played in the past.
Hall said “The future of Utah State is to become a more dynamic, research-based university” with an emphasis on areas that support the research function of the university and lead to more graduate and doctoral level degrees.
“We have no other choice than to focus. The question is, what focus do we bring? And the focus that I think is appropriate to this university is that we need to be a better recognized academic institution,” Hall said.
USU’s situation two or three years from now depends on a larger set of circumstances, such as the national economy, competitiveness of Utah’s economy, and world events like the conflict with Iraq, Hall said. “What we really need is an economy that’s a good deal healthier.
Aside from problems outside the university’s control, Hall said, “I think that there are some long-term problems built in to the financing of higher education in Utah.
Hall said the Employers Education Coalition Report at www.utah.gov provides an in-depth look at the future of education in Utah. “It’s an important document.
“We have an old model [of education funding] and the model’s really not sufficient to the demands that are and will be placed on it. The old model includes low tuition, poorly paid faculty, low financial aid, Hall said, that is predicated on a set of taxes that don’t take into account the value of higher education.
The report indicates the need for new methods of taxation and increased tuition and focus on research universities, Hall said.
DeVilbiss said, “There is a direct relationship between cost and quality. The future for students, in this state at least, points to more tuition increases. That’s just a reality.