Northwest recieved $33,098,924 in state appropriations for the 2008 - 2009 school year. Here is an example of how much Northwest would lose if that amount was to be cut. 5 percent= $1,654,947 10 percent= $3,309,893 15 percent= $4,964,839 |
At the end of last year's congressional session, many were aware the 2010 fiscal year budget would fall short, said Paul Wagner, deputy commissioner for the Missouri Department of Higher Education.
Decisions will be coming that will impact the entire University.
This year, Northwest student tuition accounts for 52 percent of Northwest's budget, and 42 percent is made up of state appropriations, Finance and Support Services Vice President Ray Courter said. The rest of the budget comes from grants and fees, Courter said.
If tuition goes up for next year and state appropriations go down there will be a larger gap.
"It really puts the burden back on the student a great deal when that happens," Courter said.
Missouri is currently ranked 47th when it comes to funding higher education, Wagner said.
"Higher education cannot bear the brunt of cuts," Wagner said.
Wagner predicts many higher education institutions are beginning to plan for possible cuts in state appropriations.
Earlier this week, the University of Missouri system announced it is freezing hiring at its four institutions.
Even though decisions have not been made yet, Northwest may eventually have to implement a plan similar to the University of Missouri's as well as cut back on other things such as travel expenses, Courter said.
"The truth is what they're doing is what we'll end up doing," Courter said.
In the previous months, Northwest officials have been meeting to prepare for a possible budget crunch, Courter said. They have been speculating how much the economy will decline and the impact it would have on Northwest, Courter said.
Toward the end of October, Missouri's Higher Education Institutions received an e-mail from Wagner, regarding the impact the deficit would have on institutions. The document indicated cuts will not be necessary for this school year.
The last time Missouri was in a similar situation requests were made to the government for impact statements with 5, 10 and 15 percent cuts.
The e-mail provided estimates those speculative so plans could be made accordingly. Officials are keeping those numbers in mind as they make next school year's budget, Courter said.
"Those early kinds of conversation, I suppose, crystallized when we received this e-mail because until we received this e-mail, we could speculate that the state would naturally be impacted by job losses and therefore general tax revenue declining," Courter said. "I'm talking about losses of jobs throughout the economy and people buying less and so sales tax is less."
The cabinet has had discussions about those draft budgets.
"We developed a couple pages of calculation assumptions that drive the numbers throughout each of those three scenarios," Courter said.
He wanted to emphasize these early numbers are just speculations. As early as mid-January, the governor will issue the state's budget to send to the state legislature. Appropriation bills are then sent to the governor to sign, which has to be done in June, Courter said.
There is a chance Northwest may not know anything until the end of June as far as next year's budget.
In the mean time, Courter recommends faculty, staff and students cutting back on spending now so money left over from this year can be applied to next year's budget. He said money can be saved doing things like shutting off lights in campus rooms not being used.
"Just because we have a budget now in place doesn't mean we ignore being frugal … every dollar we can save today is a dollar we got available to help us next year," Courter said.
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