OUR VIEW: USU doing all right despite budget cut

Wall Street and the housing market aren’t the only ones feeling the economic crunch.

The Utah legislature voted on a bill Oct. 3 to cut funding from various state agencies and institutions, resulting in a $6.5 million direct hit on USU’s funding. With tuition levels already rising annually, students can already feel their wallets getting even lighter. After all, that money’s got to come from somewhere, right? It’s easy to feel picked on as the economy dwindles.

One would think that the administrators of the university would be feeling anxious about how to continue the function of the university under increased pressure. Inevitably, some programs and facilities will lose a little funding to make up for some of the loss. A special administrative task force met on Monday to figure out who will get cuts and where.

However, as USU President Stan Albrecht wrote in a column last Wednesday, the importance of higher education as an impact on our economic future is not ignored. Men and women who are students now will be the leaders very soon and, realizing this, the administration knows that having a quality environment in which to learn is crucial. To cheapen our expensive academic experience would have lasting effects on the future of the economy, the country and possibly, not to sound cliche, the world.

That being said, the cuts to individual departments and programs will probably be as minimal as possible. Sure, the budget, when it comes to the amount of paper a department is allotted per semester will probably drop. Fewer handouts will probably be better on the environment, anyway. If the heater isn’t turned up as high as it could be in the cold, dark depths of January, having the inside be cooler might just make the outside seem less cold. In the state of our country’s economy, we can’t really ask for everything to go just the way it was, going back to our customary gluttonous ways. We’ve all already had to make changes – one look at the price of gas or the increase in one’s grocery bill is testament enough to the ripples of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on a local level. A few cuts on the university level is really just the next step as our country struggles to get its footing financially.

Besides, even being a little short for the next year in funds, we’ve got a pretty optimistic president at the helm of this university. In his column, Albrecht wrote that he feels a great sense of promise from all of us here and it’s pretty obvious that cutting a lot out of any area is detrimental to the goals of this university. The loss of budget will probably be made up by skimming a little off of everyone’s budget. If there’s another tuition hike, it probably won’t be any more than we’ve seen in the last few years. It’s possible that most of us won’t even notice the difference when all is said and done.

For bowing a little in the storm of national financial woes, the university’s still doing all right.