Within three weeks, finances across campus will be reviewed and cuts will be finalized because of budget concerns.

SIU System President Randy Dunn announced a 3.9 percent enrollment decrease at the Carbondale campus during a press conference Tuesday, resulting in a loss of more than $5 million in funding from tuition and fees.

He reported a total fall 2015 enrollment of 17,292 — a decrease in 697 students from last year. Dunn estimates a need to cut $13 to 15 million, with nearly $9 million from the Carbondale campus, in spending for this fiscal year because of the enrollment drop and proposed state funding cuts. 

The university will work to avoid harming academic programs and critical student services with the cuts, Dunn said.

“I’m not going to swear on a stack of Bibles that we don’t have to do something that touches on that core,” Dunn said. “But we’re reconvening the Executive Planning and Budget Committee to review that list of possible reductions, finalize those, and I anticipate those being announced to the campus and the larger community in about two to three weeks.”

The Carbondale campus experienced $3 million in cuts for scholarships and financial aid, which may have influenced enrollment numbers, he said.

“We can’t go year to year running $3 to $4 million in the hole because we’re over-scholarshipping,” Dunn said. 

As of now, he does not expect many, if any, layoffs but said nothing is certain. 

Graduate assistants, however, may receive substantial cuts for the spring semester. Enrollment figures show a 7 percent decrease in graduate students.

“We’re going to have to make a very tough decision with what we do about contracting GA’s for the spring semester,” Dunn said.

This year is a transition year, and Dunn said he hopes “one-time fixes” will help the budget for future years.

One of the fixes includes allowing vacant teaching positions to remain unfilled and to use the money that would be the professor’s salary as a way to make up for the budget cuts, interim Provost Susan Ford said.

Ford said instead of hiring tenured professors to teach classes, the university will hire less expensive, non-tenured track professors and use graduate assistants.

“It doesn’t serve the long-term needs of the program,” Ford said, “But it does get you a one-time cash savings that may be considerable for this year.”

Dunn said organizations across campus are responsible for determining how to adjust to their budget cuts, which could potentially lead to a decrease in student employment and research positions.

“To the extent that student employment gets hurt, we’re kind of shooting ourselves in the foot,” Dunn said. “If we start hurting student employment, that’s just going to be one more brick on this thing that makes it tougher for students to come here to school.”

Dunn explained the loss of incoming students as a result of new methodology in obtaining enrollment numbers. The university created a May 1 deadline to accept admittance, a factor first initiated for the fall 2015 semester. He said 140 students did not attend SIU because of the change.

For the first time, the number does not include the 319 students who accepted admittance but never enrolled.

The university also experienced a decrease of 125 international students from Brazil because of efforts from the Brazilian Science Mobility Program to spread students to more colleges across the U.S. 

“Maybe what we will do is have a smaller, more successful group of students that we bring into the institution,” said Josephine Evans, director of admissions. “How we define those students, we don’t know yet. What we will do is we will look at data from the retention end and work backwards. We’ll decide what we need in a student to make them successful here.”

Cory Ray can be reached at Twitter @coryray_DE or at [email protected]