Budget shortfall may strongarm tuition hike

SIU administrators struggling to curb budget hole

It’s become a tough game of tug-of-war. On one side is SIU’s tradition of being an affordable school, and on the other is a fat budget problem.

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The hefty budget debt may prove to be the stronger of the two.

University officials are toying with the idea of further raising SIUC’s tuition to mitigate next year’s state paycheck, which is expected to be about $9 million less than what the Carbondale campus originally received this year.

Sometimes extraordinary events require extraordinary changes and [raising tuition] is not off the table, Board of Trustees chairwoman Molly D’Esposito told the Daily Egyptian Thursday following SIU’s annual testimony to the Illinois House Appropriations and Higher Education Committee.

It’s the Board of Trustee’s responsibility to look at every revenue option that’s available to provide a quality education for students.

Tuition for the Carbondale campus is already slated to increase 5 percent in the fall as part of a four-year tuition plan approved by the board last year.

SIUC administrators are not shying from the fact that they may further inflate tuition to ease the budget shortfall.

When SIU President James Walker, Chancellor Walter Wendler and SIU-Edwardsville Chancellor David Werner testified before the House committee, they did not sugarcoat the dire situation.

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I want to be very clear and straightforward, without whining, these operation’s reductions are serious and painful and will negatively impact SIU’s students, faculty, staff and the region we serve, Walker said to the committee Thursday.

The Board of Trustees will review the tuition question at its meeting in April or May, when it normally examines tuition at the different campuses.

SIUC isn’t alone in considering a turn to tuition dollars to bail it out of the budget fiasco.

The University of Illinois is proposing a 10 percent increase in tuition for the fall, and that is on top of last year’s approved 37 percent increase for the next two years. At Thursday’s hearing, U of I President James Stukel said the university would be moving more than $65 million from its budget as well as eliminating 800 to 900 positions. If the tuition hike is approved, Stukel said it would save 215 of those positions.

For this fiscal year, SIUC is grappling with a $7.4 million budget hole caused by a combination of state cuts and an enrollment drop, according to Wendler. That money has to be sent back to the state by June 30. Wendler recently announced 30 Physical Plant employees would be cut from the salary line to alleviate the budget hole.

If [the budget] were to stay the way it is there will be more layoffs, said Scott Kaiser, spokesman for the president.

Northern Illinois University President John Peters said in a press release Tuesday that the shortfall at his university would be solved through a combination of significant cutbacks in each university division and a significant tuition increase.

SIUC’s cuts will hold over until next year and will even slice about $2 million deeper. In total, SIUC will have $9.3 million less to work with in the 03 fiscal budget than it did this year.

Administrators will testify again about SIU’s needs in front of the Senate Appropriations Committee sometime in April.

The governor’s recommended budget must be approved by the General Assembly before it becomes a reality.

Garrett Deakin, SIU’s budget lobbyist, said the committee did not give any indication as to whether it would approve Ryan’s recommendation for higher education. Either way, Deakin said SIU would have to get creative and find ways to do more with less.

The impact of the state budget cuts will include staff layoffs, a reduction in course offerings and an increase in class size, Deakin said following the meeting.

He also mentioned that the University would be forced to look at tuition raises as well as stashing deferred maintenance for later years.

Reporter Molly Parker can be reached at [email protected]