University of Northern Iowa President Benjamin Allen encourages students, faculty and staff to “work hard, work strong and work together” as the university plans to eliminate $8.8 million from its fiscal year 2010 budget as a result of the recent 10 percent reduction in state funding.
Throughout the week, Allen will be meeting with student, faculty, staff and stakeholder representatives to discuss what measures the university should take to close the budget gap. These conversations will be taken into consideration as the administration develops the action plan it will present to the Iowa Board of Regents Oct. 29.
The budget reduction was not a complete surprise for Allen.
“We have been thinking about this for some time,” he said. “We didn’t know it was going to be 10 percent — we thought it would be something less — but it’s not like this is a surprise. It’s something that’s a continuation of this budget process.”
Board of Regents President David Miles provided seven suggestions for regents universities at the board’s Oct. 15 telephonic meeting: temporary salary reductions, temporary lay-offs, both temporary and permanent employee benefit revisions, a tuition surcharge for the spring 2010 semester, the postponement of non-essential deferred maintenance and repairs, the refocusing or elimination of programs and permanent lay-offs.
“Each one has at least one negative, so then it’s a matter of which one has the best chance of solving the problem without creating more problems for other people — students, faculty or staff,” Allen said.
According to Allen, the university also has two other options for eliminating the budget gap. Around 300 to 400 more students enrolled at UNI this year than the university budgeted for, leading to extra tuition revenue that can be used to reduce the gap. The university also received $12.3 million in federal stimulus money for this academic year.
“We could technically solve the problem just by reallocating all of that,” Allen said. “That would not be a good choice, because the cliff would be just moved downstream, but we will probably redirect some money from that to help.”
As for the rest of the $8.8 million reduction, both Allen and Provost Gloria Gibson would like to remind the university that “everything’s on the table.” While Allen noted that each of Miles’s suggestions has at least one negative, none may be more immediately controversial to students than the suggestion for a one-time tuition increase for next semester.
Northern Iowa Student Government President Adam Haselhuhn is strictly against the idea of the surcharge, citing next year’s potentially large tuition increase as a reason.
“I know that we’re beyond a 3.5 percent increase (in tuition for next year) and we’re looking at higher numbers than that,” he said. “Once we’re outside that realm I can’t support a tuition increase that’s higher than that and I can’t support a tuition surcharge.”
Haselhuhn noted that every suggestion offered by Miles will strongly impact the students and that the addition of a surcharge would mean that “students are bearing pretty much the full brunt of the impact of the cuts.”
Allen stated that the chances of a tuition surcharge being approved by both the Board of Regents and the university are very slim, referencing the issues surrounding an energy surcharge that UNI instated a few years ago.
It was an issue there again where a lot of the complaints, besides being more tuition, was the fact that (families) had not budgeted for that (surcharge) going into that academic year,” he said.
Allen also pointed out the financial burden the surcharge would place on students and their families.
“Our students, compared to (the University of) Iowa and Iowa State (University), come from families that in general — on average, I will call it — make less money than they do at the other two universities, so this would be more of an issue of affordability,” he said. “So whatever we do there, we have to have a lot of careful thinking.”
Miles also suggested the elimination or refocusing of academic programs, an option that UNI began exploring last year when it launched two task forces to evaluate the university’s programs. The revenue enhancement and cost containment task forces reviewed the value, popularity and cost of the university’s programs and placed them in three categories: programs that should be phased out or suspended, programs that should be reorganized and programs that need to be maintained.
The roughly 50 recommendations provided by the task forces are currently being reviewed by the vice presidents of the university. According to Allen, the implementation of these recommendations will become more urgent with the budget reduction, although some of the effects may not be seen until the next fiscal year.
Gibson stated that the task force recommendations are more important now with the recent budget cuts.
“Had (the task forces’ work) not been done, we would have to do that now,” she said.
“That work is invaluable as we move forward,” she continued. “For some departments it may be very difficult, but I think we have to look very seriously at some of our programs that do not have the students there, that just have a few majors. What we’ve found also is that we offer a lot of certificates, and many of those have either no students or very few students, so many of those certificate programs will also be discontinued.”
Haselhuhn believes that the loss of academic programs could mean a decrease in enrollment.
“It could make us lose students,” he said. “If they really want to pursue that major, they may go to a different university.”
Several of Miles’s suggestions, including the temporary and permanent layoffs and the benefit revisions, will require negotiations with the labor unions, which Allen noted will be very difficult as well as time-consuming. One issue stems from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which includes all state employees. Allen doesn’t know whether any agreements with AFSCME would have to be state-wide or regent-wide.
With the time that such negotiations will likely take, Allen doesn’t believe the negotiations will have much of an effect on the alleviation of current budget problems.
“Anything that requires renegotiation to me will have more impact on fiscal year 2011, because it’ll take that much time for the impacts to be felt,” he said. “My guess: anything that deals with renegotiation we’ll look at carefully, but I can’t believe we’ll say that will solve our fiscal year 2010 budget, because if we are successful at getting it done quickly, it’s going to take awhile for that to be felt.”
The budget cuts may also have negative effects on university plans to implement campus-wide Internet access and to increase the number of online course offerings, as well as plans to construct a new residence hall. Although the residence hall would be paid for by students’ room and board fees as opposed to state funding, the university must consider whether or not those dollars could be better spent elsewhere.
“Students do want different types of residence halls now than when I went to school and so if that is necessary to accommodate the students and that’s going to affect our enrollment, then we need to do that to enhance our enrollment,” Allen said. “Enrollment and tuition will become more important in the future because the state funds are lower.”
In addition to his meetings with various constituencies around campus to discuss future plans, Allen will also be speaking to students, faculty and staff at two town hall meetings this week Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. and Thursday from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. The meetings will be held by Gibson in order to involve the campus in the development of the university’s five-year plan, which will be shaped by the recent budget cuts.
“What we want to do through this process of strategic planning is to focus the university on five or six goals whereby future decisions are made based on how we say we’re going to move through these next three to five years,” Gibson said. “We won’t be able to do everything, but what’s most important is that what we do, we do very well. President Allen, one of his goals is that we become the state’s premiere university for undergraduate education, so certainly that will be one of our goals.”
Allen believes that the budget cuts will have a strong influence on the development of the strategic plan.
“I think now with the budget cuts, it’s going to focus more on: these are the budget realities of the situation,” he said. “Given these budget realities, what does that mean for the planning process? Do you have to plan for something smaller? Do you have to plan differently? Or maybe now is to plan more boldly, where we have to change the way we do things, because we can’t keep doing the same things the same way with different outcomes.”
Regardless of what the university must do to close the budget gap, both Allen and Gibson believe that UNI will persevere despite the hardships ahead.
“I think that we find ourselves in a situation that challenges us to be creative, challenges us to be focused, challenges us to maximize our resources and that even though this may be a difficult time, we can, I believe, come out of this process this year as a stronger university and a more focused university, and that will be good for everyone,” Gibson said.
Haselhuhn expressed his trust in the administration to lead the university through these budget cuts.
“Students voices have been heard and, granted, every decision that gets made might not be the one that all of us want to see happen, but I have a lot of confidence in President Allen that they’re the right decisions,” he said.
UNI President encourages campus to work strong, hard, together in light of budget cuts
Published: Monday, October 19, 2009
Updated: Tuesday, October 20, 2009
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