If MTSU were a Fortune 500 company, they would call it “restructuring.”
Since MTSU is a public university, President Sidney McPhee called it “Positioning the university for the future.”
“We are not going to put our heads in the sand and wait for the proverbial storm to pass,” McPhee said. “We are going to be proactive.”
McPhee held the second of two campus-wide forums this afternoon to address looming budget cuts from the state and his plan to look deeply at the university to develop a new plan for the future.
“We cannot continue with business as usual at the institution and prepare for the future,” McPhee told a lecture hall filled to the brim with faculty, students and staff.
McPhee expects the university will have to cut a total of $20 million to $22 million from the budget before 2010.
The cuts include an expected $10 million to $12 million decrease in state funding in the next academic year. These cuts are on top of the university losing more than $6 million in state funding over the summer with another $4 million in October.
MTSU started fiscal year 2008-2009 with more than $100 million in funding from the state, that number has since dropped to a little more than $91 million of the university’s total budget of more than $345 million.
In the first and second rounds of budget cuts this year, McPhee said the budget was balanced with few cuts to academics by reductions in other areas.
“The university can’t cut (another) 10 percent without significant bleeding and significant pain,” McPhee said.
In order to prepare the university for the cuts, McPhee has formed four “strategic work groups” and a steering committee.
These committees will hear suggestions from students and faculty on how to eliminate waste, consolidate current resources and generate new funding sources for the future, as well as look at cutting university jobs and possibly future classes offered.
“We are in the driver’s seat,” McPhee said. “We are on the bus driving to success, but we may have to drop some things off. …”
“We are not going to sit on the side of the road waiting for someone to repair this (bus),” he continued.
To repair the bus, McPhee said some tenured faculty may be laid off and buy out offers are still in consideration.
All cuts will be done with academics as priority No. 1, in hopes of creating a leaner university positioned for the future, McPhee said.
Michelle Willard can be contacted at 615-869-0816 or mwillard@murfreesboropost.com.
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