Higher ed cuts going deeper
LSU is placing more of a financial burden on its athletics department, while Southern University is expediting layoffs and Baton Rouge Community College is intentionally lowering its enrollment by reducing class offerings.
These are a few of the ways colleges are implementing $50 million in new mid-fiscal-year state budget cuts to higher education, according to budget documents due Thursday.
“It is what it is,” LSU Chancellor Michael Martin said. “We’ll tough it out.”
Since the decline in revenues to state government began three years ago, higher education has been cut by $360 million, which is nearly 25 percent of the funds colleges and universities collect from the state.
Martin said LSU’s general state appropriations have dipped more than 37 percent during the same time frame.
The latest budget cut share for the main LSU campus is $8.1 million. The fair share calculation for the Baton Rouge campus is $7.8 million. But the LSU System, which oversees all LSU campuses, took an additional $300,000 or so to help offset losses to the Pennington Biomedical Research Center on Perkins Road, the documents show.
LSU’s main campus is delaying or eliminating 40 vacant positions and transferring the funding of nearly 20 more jobs to other revenue sources, primarily the self-sustaining athletic department.
LSU athletics will take over the funding for the positions in the Cox Communications Academic Center for Student-Athletes, according to LSU, so the university does not have to implement any new layoffs at this time.
The story at Southern University is much different.
Southern, which declared a financial emergency earlier this year, was already planning to lay off nearly 90 faculty and staff during the spring semester. Its new $1.67 million budget hit is accelerating the staff layoffs and possibly adding more job losses, according to budget documents.
The cut also means additional reductions in travel, supplies, student laboratory services and faculty and staff development, according to Southern Chancellor James Llorens’ budget plan.
“Reduced quantity and quality of services to our students; negative impact on recruitment, retention and graduation rates; and drastic low morale of faculty, staff and students are all realities that are directly attributed to ongoing mandated budget reductions … ,” Llorens’ budget submission states.
BRCC’s budget would be cut more than $750,000, the documents show.
The college is anticipating the loss of 262 students this spring because the college cannot afford to hire the part-time adjunct faculty to teach the additional course offerings. So students will have fewer class options, according the BRCC budget reduction plan.
Elsewhere, Southeastern Louisiana University is dealing with a $2.44 million budget hit by eliminating 10 vacant faculty and student support jobs, cutting library acquisitions and further reducing the budgets for athletics, supplies and travel.
The University of Louisiana at Lafayette has a $3.32 million cut that means $1 million less in library acquisitions, academic services and research equipment; a $1 million cut to athletics; and another $1 million hit to the university’s research, economic and workforce development centers.
But some of the worst-hit segments of higher education are those that do not receive tuition revenues from students.
The $3.4 million cut to the LSU Agricultural Center means more ongoing woes for its research and outreach services statewide, AgCenter Chancellor Bill Richardson said.
The LSU AgCenter, which flirted with declaring a financial emergency this year, already has laid off close to 45 employees this year and eliminated some vacancies, Richardson said.
The new cuts hurt more and will lead to additional employee attrition, he said.
“The morale is horrible,” Richardson said, “and I’ll expect some more turnover.
“It’s going to be difficult,” he continued. “We’re going to use some one-time money to fill the holes. But that money has to be paid back at some point. We can’t keep living like this.”
Across state government agencies this month, Gov. Bobby Jindal and legislators closed a $251 million state operating budget hole, making $144 million in cuts and using newly available federal and state funds to make up the rest.
Out of the $50 million share of cuts for higher education, more than $21 million was axed from the LSU System; $17.2 million from the nine-college University of Louisiana System; nearly $3 million from the Southern University System; $7.3 million from the Louisiana Community and Technical College System; and more than $1 million from the Louisiana Board of Regents.