News

President details cuts at UMaine

6% tuition hike, 40 layoffs for next year

Posted on April 02, 2009, at 12:00 a.m.

Heather Steeves

UM President Robert Kennedy addresses community members at a budget meeting.

Tuition hikes, layoffs, budget gaps, investment losses and the stimulus package were all discussed in two numeral-filled budget presentations.

The University of Maine’s Vice President for Administration and Finance Janet Waldron and President Robert Kennedy gave two budget meetings detailing where the $8.9 million in cuts will come from.

This gap is after an estimated 6 percent tuition hike and a Unified Fee increase. The rising fees and tuition will mean $556 per year more for an in-state undergraduate student and $1,366 more per year for an out-of-state undergrad.

This won’t be the last of it. Tuition is expected to rise 6 percent each year for the next four years.

There will be layoffs too – about 40 of them.

Waldron explained that 70 percent of the education-related budget goes toward compensation. The other 30 percent goes to operating costs.

“Any educational institution is going to have this type of configuration, which makes it very difficult when it comes to times of budget reduction. And where you go to reduce it puts pressure on workforce management,” Waldron said.

UMaine plans to shrink some compensation costs by losing between 80 and 100 positions. Forty of these will be from layoffs; the others are vacant positions that will not be filled.

Affected employees will be notified in the next three or four weeks, according to Waldron.

In addition to layoffs and vacant positions, some workers will have reduced hours.

$7 million of the $8.9 million in cuts will be divided up to departments on campus (see box).

One question, e-mailed in by James Bradley, the state president of ASCUM – a bargaining unit that represents the COLT employees at UMaine – asked if Kennedy would forgo a $175,000 bonus his contract allows him every five years in order to save some positions. Kennedy said, “I feel I am making sacrifices myself. To categorically at this point and at this venue … address specific question of cuts for myself or other employees, I think, is inappropriate.”

“The president has in fact taken some days off without pay,” Waldron said when asked about furlough days. She said these days without pay are a one-time fix that are not being considered to address the $8.9 million gap.

It’s not all bad news, according to Waldron. “There will be stimulus funding coming into the university system that is one-time money,” she said. “How that is distributed will be a subject that the presidents will be very actively engaged in and will be determined in the reasonable future here.”

Kennedy said he was unsure how much of the stimulus money the Orono campus will receive. “The $6.5 [million] – if things were divided up the way the state appropriation is divided up – we would get roughly half of that. We can’t make that assumption yet,” he said. The divvying process will be done through the system office.

Kennedy foresees some of the stimulus money going toward financial aid.

Waldron said UMaine saved $1.6 million in energy costs against this year’s budget, and it locked in electricity and gas “at phenomenal rates.”

“We think we’ve saved between $1.6 [million] and $2 million that is getting pulled out of the 2010 budget,” Waldron said about the locking in on low electricity and gas rates.

But the university is considering losing some programs, including the Computer Connection.

A study conducted by an outside consulting firm recommended the closing of Orono and the University of Southern Maine’s computer stores. Waldron said the recommendation was lacking detail and explanation.

“Prior to [taking] any action on that, we will certainly look at that in a much greater local detail,” Waldron said.

Recently the University of Southern Maine lost its daycare program. When asked, Waldron said that UMaine was not considering dropping its childcare program.

Another audience question asked why students should pay more in tuition for less of an education.

“If you look at the value and the increase in economic opportunity for students with a college education, you quickly do the math and you realize the value of an education, particularly at the University of Maine,” Kennedy said.

Waldron disagreed that less was being offered at UMaine. “The richness of what is being offered here is really the focus,” she said.

The Board of Trustees will approve a final budget and student charges for the next fiscal year on May 18.

To watch the two budget meetings, visit mainecampus.com.

Campus Currents: Robert Kennedy