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Work in Progress
Community Dialogue on Budget Reductions:
Principles and Options
Janet Dudley-Eshbach, President
January 27, 2003
For Discussion Purposes:
Principles for 2003-2004 Budget Reduction
Plan:
1.
Preserve quality.
The fact that SU enjoys such high demand is the result of delivering
high quality educational programs and services. Beyond our
success in the marketplace, we have achieved the highest retention
and graduation rates in USM, objective indicators of quality and
effectiveness. We need to protect this level of quality on
behalf of current and future generations of students because, once
diminished, it will take years to restore. Our reputation
influences all that we do, our student profile, the prospects of our
graduates, faculty recruitment, employee morale, and our
relationships with external constituencies.
2.
Make reductions strategically.
Organizations that face the task of
downsizing best do so through a strategic analysis of how current
activities relate and contribute to core mission. Those
programs and services that directly impact the teaching-learning
process and contribute to high retention and graduation rates need
to be protected. Those activities that are more peripheral to
core mission and maintenance of high quality need to be examined for
possible restructuring or elimination. Decisions to consolidate,
restructure, privatize, or retrench should be made and explained in
strategic terms.
3.
Minimize the impact on students.
A balanced approach must take into
account more realistic tuition levels in a period of high student
demand, inadequate State appropriations, course availability, length
of time to degree, and class size issues.
4.
Minimize the impact on the
instructional program. We are trying to
avoid any reductions in faculty positions to ensure the strength and
integrity of programming now and in the future.
5.
Minimize the impact on the
lower-salaried positions.
“Tools in the Toolbox”
- Targeted operating reductions
- Elimination of position
vacancies and continuation of hiring freeze
- Assessment of appropriate
enrollment levels (note: funding guidelines are enrollment
driven
- Consideration of
possibilities for privatization
- Utilization of one-time fund
balances
- Tuition increases (note: an
increase of 5% or $85 per in-state student per semester yields
approximately $570,000 per semester or approximately $1,400,000
per year.)
- Possibility of retirement
incentives
- Furloughs (for everyone or
for upper salaried only?)
- Possible reductions in the
workforce through layoffs and retrenchments
- Fewer contingent positions
(in part because we need to create more student employment
opportunities)
- Possible moratorium on
sabbaticals
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