Last week, interim Chancellor Hank Foley wrote a letter to staff regarding the $32 million budgetary shortfall that MU is expected to face for next year.
“I wish I had better news,” Foley wrote.
Us too, Foley. Us too.
The shortfall will come from an anticipated enrollment of 1,500 fewer students for fall 2016. MU will impose a 5 percent budget cut across the board. But even with that cut, Foley wrote that MU “will be $10 million short of balancing (the) recurring budget.” Reserve funds will be then used to fill the gap in the 2016–17 budget. There will be a hiring freeze effective immediately, and there will also be no raises, unless through promotions.
These initial steps being taken by administration are all the right ones, but the fact is that they should have been put into motion months ago. But it’s all “would have, could have, should have” now — it’s in the past. Now is the time for our interim administration to be pragmatic and transparent as they make these cuts. A good start would be addressing the student body directly regarding these cuts as opposed to letting them read about them elsewhere.
As different ways of trimming down the budget are explored, stakeholders must be able to access information about and provide feedback on changes in allocations and expenditures with MU’s budget. As far as what comes next for MU, budgetary transparency is essentially all that our interim administration can control. What they cannot control, however, is the continued bullying of Missouri’s revenge-seeking state legislature.
The needless pettiness of Missouri’s conservative legislators is exacerbating the already severe budgetary crisis MU is facing. This past Thursday, 108 members in the Missouri House of Representatives voted to cut funding for the UM System by $8.6 million — on top of the deficit from the admissions drop.
The clear negative impact of this revenge-oriented budget goes without saying. These spiteful state legislators are motivated by a desire to not “reward bad behavior” and to punish MU for a “failure in leadership.”
But these legislators are short-sighted and foolish for thinking that budgetary cuts will somehow rectify the mistakes made by MU’s administration last semester and promote improvements into the future. On the contrary, these cuts place MU in an even deeper hole and make it clear that the university will receive no help to climb out.
We’re used to a state legislature unwilling to lend a hand to Missouri higher education, but we’re still disappointed that our representatives would kick us while we are down like this. Cuts to the UM System will inevitably trickle down to the students through either diminished quality of services or through increased tuitions and fees.
This isn’t the first time we’ve criticized the state legislature for being anti-higher education, and it certainly won’t be the last. Now, we’re turning to our administrators to use their best judgments in proceeding with these severe budget cuts and begging them to consider the students when making these decisions.
MU’s administration has not been particularly adept at crisis management in the past. This is the chance for our current interim administration to correct this.
