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The University of Maine System office recently shouldered the University of Maine with cutting $6.5 million from its 2008-2009 budget, which could lead to larger class sizes and less financial aid for students in the future.
Because of Maine’s increasingly fragile economy, Gov. John Baldacci issued a curtailment order to UMS, demanding that it cut $12,526,944 from its campuses’ budgets. As the largest UMS university, UMaine received approximately half of the $12.5 million cut request, while the rest divided among the other six campuses.
“Well, it’s not as bad as we first heard it might be, so that’s a good thing. However, the university runs on a very tight budget, so finding $6.5 million to curtail will be extremely challenging,” Prof. Dianne Hoff said.
UMaine President Kennedy is trying to reduce the $6.5 million budget cut request.
“We have been very aggressive – and that’s an understatement – to say that we won’t accept shouldering the burden of other campuses’ deficits,” Kennedy said during the Oct. 22 Faculty Senate meeting. Hoff hopes the financial burden will be redistributed more evenly among all seven UMS campuses.
Students might see bigger class sizes, less financial aid, scholarship money and the elimination of smaller programs in the future. Hoff stressed that it is too early to know if any of these will become a reality. The impact of the budget cuts is still being determined.
“First, what we’re doing is trying to identify what the impact of the cut will be on campus, and then we will be getting back to the system office with what we expect the impact will be,” said Janet Waldron, vice president of Administration and Finance.
The impact report will be sent to the UMS office some time next week.
“We are hoping that the target that we end up getting will be significantly reduced because of the impact on the campus,” Waldron said. “Hopefully the number won’t get any worse.”
UMaine plans to fulfill the curtailment order by requiring every hiring to be accompanied by a suitable reason and reviewing all vacant positions currently in the process of being filled. The university will also cut costs by reducing compensation increases, overtime, travel, refreshments at meetings, contracts, purchases and greater energy conservation, according to the president’s office.
“The first step of this is the governor will take the curtailment because he’s reducing spending for all state agencies – we’re part of a much bigger picture statewide – and that gets translated into a bill that goes before the Appropriations Committee, and then the final number comes out of the legislative process, working with the governor’s office,” Waldron said. “Until that’s done, we won’t really know where we stand.”
Hoff said student employees will likely not be affected because they represent a small portion of the budget. Some upper-level positions may be eliminated.
The budget cuts will likely spill over into the following fiscal year, according to Hoff and Kennedy.
UMS reduced some of the financial burden by taking a few cuts at the system level, Waldron said.
UMaine faculty expect to know the exact numbers of what they will be forced to cut by the end of November.
Bangor Daily News