Last year’s anxiety about university budget cuts has subsided, but some Ohio University colleges are feeling the effects more than others as their budget reduction scenarios are being put into action.
OU was dealt a $5.3 million cut from its state subsidy for this year, and increasing health care and utility costs brought the total deficit to $9.6 million. Each of OU’s academic colleges and non-academic support units, such as the Division of Student Affairs, developed budget-reduction scenarios to help fill that gap.
The Russ College of Engineering and Technology took a $1.1 million hit this year, according to its budget reduction document.
The college saved about $838,000 by shifting 12 positions to alternate funds and another $261,972 from early retirements. Instead of using money from the operating budget to pay for eight of its research technicians and four of its staff members, the college is now using funds from its endowment as well as research proceeds.
“We really had earmarked (endowment and research funds) over the long haul for improvement in our stature among the engineering community,” Russ College Dean Dennis Irwin said. “I don’t like to see these funds that we had earmarked for improvement purposes used for holding the line. … But the university had a number they had to deal with, and we were able to help them out.”
State funding and tuition make up about half of Russ College’s total budget, while endowment and research proceeds compose most of the other half, Irwin said.
The college also had two faculty members retire early this year. The positions were not filled, and additional early retirements in the college could lead to fewer elective classes being offered, Irwin said.
This is also the case for the Scripps College of Communication, which cut $650,000 from its budget this year.
“In some situations, we’re teaching fewer electives across the different majors,” Interim Scripps College Dean Scott Titsworth said.
Titsworth added that OU’s quarters-to-semesters transition will help ease the loss of the seven faculty members who retired this year.
“It sort of opened up some degree of freedom that directors could use in assigning courses that made it easier to assign faculty across the curriculum,” he said. “So that makes the impact of losing any particular faculty member less felt by the school.”
Both the Scripps College and the College of Business dealt with some early retirements of tenure-track faculty members by replacing them with lower-level faculty members.
“We went out and hired replacement faculty members … and they were academically qualified, so they are candidates for the permanent (tenure-track) position,” College of Business Dean Hugh Sherman said. “We’ve had a very successful recruiting fall.”
The College of Business has hired 13 faculty members so far this year; six are tenure-track and five are Group II, meaning they have the potential to be promoted to tenure-track.
The college has been able to hire some lower-level replacement faculty because of increased revenue from expanding enrollment, Sherman said. The College of Business reduced its budget by $347,000 this year.
Some colleges have been able to lessen the damage of budget cuts by finding small ways to be more efficient in their spending.
“I don’t know that we’ve seen a significant effect (of the budget cuts) at all,” said Randy Leite, dean of the College of Health Sciences and Professions. “Every year, we start to plan for a significant cut … and we kind of think of the worst-case scenario, and many years, it ends up not being the worst-case scenario.”
The college has trimmed $270,000 from its operating budget by shifting funding to other revenue sources, such as tuition money from online nursing and health administration programs, Leite said. The college also looked to its two clinics, which generate revenue, to take on some additional costs.
“What we tried to do is look at places that have the ability to generate some of their own revenues and where could they take on some of the costs that have historically been provided to them (from the college’s operating budget),” Leite said. “We found we could transfer the copying costs; the clinics could absorb those with their own revenues.”
The Patton College of Education cut back on international travel and fully implemented a workload policy for early-retired faculty to meet its reduction target of about $310,000.
“We’re asking faculty to travel in-state because international travel is so expensive, so that was an area where we thought we could be more efficient now,” Patton College Dean Renée Middleton said. “Faculty may attend (international conferences), but they can’t attend using our resources.”
Early-retired faculty members are also taking on more work this year than some have in previous years. The Patton College is now completely implementing its policy that faculty members who retired early still teach three courses per quarter. They do not, however, serve on committees, do student advising or complete research because of their retirement status.
Other ways the college is cutting back include encouraging the use of electronics to view documents as opposed to printing them out.
“We’re continuing to look at ways to be more efficient,” Middleton said. “It’s very tight for us this year as far as budget cuts, but it could have been much worse.”
