FORT KENT, Maine - The University of Maine System's Board of Trustees has given the final OK to a plan to eliminate three academic programs at the University of Southern Maine. At their meeting today in Fort Kent, system trustees also unanimously voted to ask state lawmakers to approve funding increases for Maine's public universities for the next two fiscal years. Trustees say the system needs more funding from the state in order to maintain a freeze on tuition rates. USM, meantime, may be facing another round of budget cuts next year.
David Flanagan, USM's new president, outlined the university's difficult financial predicament in a morning briefing before the board. USM's budget deficit has now climbed to $16 million this year, due to lower-than-anticipated enrollment.
Flanagan says the university has to find a way to cut costs. "I hope we'll be able to do as much as possible through voluntary retirements."
Flanagan says the system has improved the package of benefits for those who are eligible. He says there are more than 100 professors and 100 staffers at USM who could retire. "And if they did, it would reduce the need for layoffs to virtually nothing. So we're hoping retirement works. But we are preparing a set of program eliminations and faculty and staff reductions."
News of the possibility of another round of painful budget cutting at USM came as UMaine system trustees gave final approval to a plan to eliminate the American and New England studies, geosciences and the Lewiston-Auburn Arts and Humanities programs at the university. The cuts have been protested by faculty and students at USM for months. Jerry Lasala chairs USM's Physics Department and heads the faculty senate.
"Every cut that we have is likely not only to harm students currently in the programs but actually a much broader spectrum of students who question whether USM is going to be the place for them," Lasala said.
Lasala says USM's large population of adult learners make cuts to academic programs especially problematic. "A large fraction of our students are place bound. And many of them are older adult learners who can't simply relocate to one of the other campuses of the system."
The union representing affected faculty members has argued that the university did not follow proper procedures in deciding to get rid of the programs and is likely to take the case to arbitration.
"From my perspective, there is nothing more difficult than cutting programs," says Sam Collins, the chair of the UMaine System Board of Trustees. "It does affect families. It affects students, and it affects people who are working at the university. However, we have to look at the long-term sustainability of the university."
At their meeting, trustees and university administrators also discussed the sustainability of the system's commitment to not raising tuition rates. "There's no higher priority we have, in serving our students in the state, than affordability," said UMaine Chancellor James Page.
But Page says that affordability is now at risk. Total enrollment, statewide, is down. At the same time, the system has not received a funding increase from the state since fiscal year 2013. So Page says administrators and board members will be making the case that the time has come for an increase during the next two fiscal years.
"We're asking the state not to catch us up on in any previous reductions, but just to keep us even, essentially, with cost of living, consumer price index and the rest," he said.
If the Legislature is not able to deliver, the UMaine System may have no choice but to lift the freeze on tuition and ask Maine families to start paying more to send their kids to the state's public universities.