UNI will look to academics, athletics, Lab School to cut budget

University of Northern Iowa athletics, academic programs, the Malcolm Price Lab School and the campus police department are among the programs under review to cut the university budget, President Ben Allen told faculty and staff Thursday.

Detailed recommendations about what programs are recommended for cuts or mergers likely will be announced in the next two weeks, UNI officials said.

"We will announce academic program mergers and closures. The academic programs are those with low enrollment and few graduates," Allen said in his email. "Making difficult decisions today will help ensure that we continue our tradition of excellence."

Some UNI faculty leaders said there is frustration on campus about the lack of communication during this months-long discussion of budget restructuring.

"The faculty are extremely concerned, and not just faculty but quite a few administrators, that there haven't been details," UNI Faculty Senate Chairman Jeff Funderburk said. "There hasn't been consultation generally on the academic side below the level of vice president. I think the biggest concern is how tight the information has been held for the entire year."

UNI had a $5 million budget shortfall in the current fiscal year, a result of state funding cuts in recent years and lower-than-expected fall enrollment of full-time students. UNI officials have for months been studying ways to reduce and reallocate the budget for the long-term, since state funding continues to make up a smaller portion of the budget and UNI relies much more heavily on in-state tuition when compared to the University of Iowa and Iowa State University.

UNI Print Services will close on campus in March to be outsourced, UNI Spokesman Jim O'Connor said. There also is a review of UNI Public Safety, with the discussion of possibly outsourcing that. The Cedar Falls Police Department has shown interest if outsourcing is pursued, O'Connor said.

"We're looking at everything we do to see if there's a better way to do it, a more effective way, a more efficient way," he said.

The athletics department is focused more on finding ways to increase revenue to handle the budget changes, O'Connor said. The department wants to tighten its belt, but cutting a sport is not something that's being strongly considered, he said.

The Malcolm Price Lab School on the UNI campus and the UNI Museum are two other programs that face budget changes and review, and "all the options are out there" including closure, O'Connor said.

Undergraduate and graduate programs will be impacted by the academic cuts and mergers. Officials are looking at small programs with low enrollment that have graduated perhaps just two or three students in recent years, O'Connor said. Students currently in the programs would be allowed to finish.

The planned changes will mean a decline in UNI staffing numbers, though officials can't yet say how the reduction will happen. They hope much of it can be through early retirement and attrition, and O'Connor said officials "aren't sure yet" about possible layoffs.

Cathy DeSoto, president of the United Faculty, the collective bargaining group for UNI faculty, said that group has met twice with UNI officials and a third meeting is scheduled, meetings required under the union rules if the university plans to lay anyone off.

"They say they don't want to have layoffs, that they hope to avoid them. We certainly take them at their word ... but we don't know what's going to happen," DeSoto said. "United Faculty wants to protect the core mission of the university."

Curricular matters and program closures are matters on which faculty should be consulted, DeSoto said, adding there has been some frustration among faculty about that.

Funderburk said a special meeting of the Faculty Senate has been set for Monday to talk about the budget because faculty have grown so concerned.

In the past several years, UNI has cut its baseball program, at least 16 academic programs, a vice president position and eliminated about 75 jobs via early retirement and attrition in response to a loss of about $20 million in state funding. UNI's enrollment is about 92 percent in-state students.