USU President Stan Albrecht guaranteed that the university will do everything to hold its students “harmless” during budget cuts, caused by world-wide economic crisis, in a press conference on Wednesday.
In response to global economic crisis, the state legislation has made a decision to rebalance the state budget, including approximately $6.5 million cut for USU for the current academic year and FY2009.
“These extraordinary challenges are enormously difficult; and the university is not insulated from the consequences,” the president said, “However, we will try to minimize the direct financial impact on our students.”
A six-member Budget Reduction Committee, co-chaired by Provost Raymond Coward and financial Vice President Fred Hunsaker, is working on putting together a proposal to each unit suggesting 5.5% budget cut, the president informed. No decisions will be made on any cuts until December 1st.
Student-journalists were concerned with potential impacts of cuts. One of the most worrisome questions concerned a possible increase in tuition.
“We’ve committed ourselves to minimizing the impact on the quality of academic programs and on our students,” president assured.
Private donor endowments and student loan protection are tools to help students “meet their basic needs.” New donation-based scholarship, called The Aggie Promise, will provide small scholarships to students to solve their short-term financial problems.
Several suggestions were made, concerning possible areas of budget cuts. One of the most widely offered proposals by students was eliminating university’s football program. In response to the proposal, the president explained that football is “the most revenue-generating” type of athletics on campus. Eliminating football program would mean a loss of another resource.
In unpredictable course of economics, ups and downs are anticipated, the president said.
“We try to build the corpus in ‘good years’ so in ‘bad years’ we have some funds to meet our obligations.”
Albrecht Press Conference
USU President Stan Albrecht guaranteed that the university will do everything to hold its students “harmless” during budget cuts, caused by world-wide economic crisis, in a press conference on Wednesday.
In response to global economic crisis, the state legislation has made a decision to rebalance the state budget, including approximately $6.5 million cut for USU for the current academic year and FY2009.
“These extraordinary challenges are enormously difficult; and the university is not insulated from the consequences,” the president said, “However, we will try to minimize the direct financial impact on our students.”
A six-member Budget Reduction Committee, co-chaired by Provost Raymond Coward and financial Vice President Fred Hunsaker, is working on putting together a proposal to each unit suggesting 5.5% budget cut, the president informed. No decisions will be made on any cuts until December 1st.
Student-journalists were concerned with potential impacts of cuts. One of the most worrisome questions concerned a possible increase in tuition.
“We’ve committed ourselves to minimizing the impact on the quality of academic programs and on our students,” president assured.
Private donor endowments and student loan protection are tools to help students “meet their basic needs.” New donation-based scholarship, called The Aggie Promise, will provide small scholarships to students to solve their short-term financial problems.
Several suggestions were made, concerning possible areas of budget cuts. One of the most widely offered proposals by students was eliminating university’s football program. In response to the proposal, the president explained that football is “the most revenue-generating” type of athletics on campus. Eliminating football program would mean a loss of another resource.
In unpredictable course of economics, ups and downs are anticipated, the president said.
“We try to build the corpus in ‘good years’ so in ‘bad years’ we have some funds to meet our obligations.”
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