After building a budget for this fiscal year based on revenue projections that fell short last year and resulted in overspending, coupled with a floundering economy, the university is cutting costs.
“How we budgeted this year was very aggressive based on all the information we had last year,” University President Pat Long said. “And so we built the budget thinking we would have more students, thinking that we would have more fundraising and thinking that we would have our online courses at (the School of Professional and Graduate Studies) ready to roll.”
Baker developed its budget for this year in the spring. However, a new computer system was being used, which officials realized over the summer wasn’t generating complete reports.
“You develop your budget always in the spring, so you’re always looking at where you are at that particular time and the information you have,” Long said. “Had we had all the information in March that we have now, I don’t think we would have been as aggressive with our revenue projections and our expense budget. We would have had a tighter budget to begin with.”
At the close of the fiscal year the end of July, the university noticed it had overspent in at least three places including financial aid, and facility and management costs at SPGS.
“After we looked to what our enrollments were in September is when we really started thinking about this year because we were 40 students less on this campus full-time than we planned the budget for,” Long said. “We knew by then we couldn’t offer the online courses. Then the economic situation began.”
Because everything seemed to hit at once, Long said the university made the decision to issue the hiring freeze and start making budget cuts. She said the budget for all four schools is around $42 million and needs to be reduced by about $3.5 million.
Long said she’s been researching what other universities are doing and talking regularly with the deans and department chairs. She said she’s confident the university has resolved the computer problems, and she’s proud of the way the Baker community is handling the budget cuts.
“We’re all sort of in this together,” she said. “(Rand) Ziegler, (vice president and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences), has done a fabulous job working with the chairs to try and find where we might be able to take some money out for this year,” Long said. “What we’re trying to do is preserve people’s jobs and not impact what’s going on in the classroom. That’s our biggest concern right now.”
Student Senate Vice President Gillian Joy sits on the Provost Advisory Board and said the administration is working hard to make cuts impact students as little as possible.
“They’re trying to make it invisible to students by cutting travel done by professors to different meetings and conferences, copy costs and things like that,” she said.
Student senate’s budget also has been cut by $3,000 from its original allotment of $11,200. However, Joy said she doesn’t think it will prevent organizations from receiving funds that need them.
“In the past, we haven’t really spent as much money as we’ve actually been given, so it probably won’t hurt us,” she said.
John Buehler, chair of the music department, said he was asked to cut the music department’s budget by 15 percent, which he has succeeded in doing, because its one of the larger departmental budgets.
“It’s going to mean we’re able to do about 85 percent of what our strategic plan calls for,” he said, which means the department will put off new recruitment initiatives.
Buehler said he’s concerned about the cuts, as is the rest of the campus, but said it’s a problem everyone is dealing with.
“Times are hard. They are all over – personally, institutionally, and in every way, and I know at the heart of every decision that is being made, is student benefit. We’re going to have to look at other ways to do the things that we’ve done in the past, and I think that will cause us to be more efficient. And I know we’re bright enough to be more effective.”
A budget summit is being held at 3:30 p.m. Monday at Collins House for university officials to discuss where cuts have been made and if it’s sufficient or if more steps will have to be taken to secure the budget.