While deans and department chairs groan about a campus-wide 4.7 percent budget cut, the Academic Outreach and Continuing Education office has to swallow a 10.5 percent budget reduction.
The large budget cut forced Cliff Drew, associate vice president for outreach, to layoff staff, cut programs and analyze nearly every penny that flows through AOCE’s office. Deans and department chairs across campus tell similar stories, but AOCE’s budget is unique because this slash marks the third time in three years AOCE has trimmed its budget.
In 1999, the U drastically changed the mission of the office, switching the way it funded classes. Before that time, AOCE paid for courses offered after 4:30 p.m. Departments took advantage of this and were offering classes late to avoid paying the cost of the course, Drew said.
But in 2000, Dave Pershing, senior vice president for academic affairs, returned the responsibility for funding night classes to the academic departments.
This shift in distribution cut AOCE’s funding from $9.5 million to $4.3 million, changing the state- funded portion of AOCE’s budget from 75 percent in 1999, to 45 percent in 2001.
At the same time, “there was a general view on campus that AOCE needed to be more self- funded and function more like a business,” Drew said. “I like that idea, but it has taken a lot of creative measures.”
When AOCE stopped funding night courses, it drastically reduced the number of classes offered for credit, cutting nearly half of the offices’ offerings. At the same time, AOCE increased the total number of non-credit classes offered to increase tuition revenue.
“The restructuring of AOCE forced its dependence on tuition for survival,” Drew said.
So AOCE began offering more online courses and professional classes for working adults. It also expanded the youth education program which is completely self-funded through tuition.
“We have a great market for these type of classes. Our competition is higher priced and less flexible,” Drew said.
In some ways, Drew admits the 1999 shift in funding helped prepare him for this year’s additional budget slash, “but it was still a shock to AOCE.”
The cuts added stress to the staff, Drew said. Teachers in the AOCE program really love their classes, so all cuts caused major disruptions, he said.
“In some cases we cut personnel, in other cases we cut programs?great programs?but I could no longer afford to run them,” Drew said.
Four people were laid off on April 2. A fifth person, a 64-year-old woman, agreed to an early retirement in December. Two of the people let go were part of a computer technician team and the other two worked in AOCE’s videographic unit which was completely deleted.
“They weren’t utilized enough to keep them employed,” Drew said. “For the little video work that we do, we could do it cheaper if we contract the work with small businesses.”
In all, the layoffs saved AOCE $120,000 annually.
Pershing said he admires Drew’s hard work and “sensible cuts.” AOCE had a harder time cutting its budget than many academic programs did, Pershing said, and that’s because though a lot of academic departments saved money by leaving unfilled positions empty, AOCE didn’t have open positions to leave unfilled.
In the future, Pershing said he hopes AOCE can offer more courses at the U’s satellite campuses and distance delivery classes online.
“It is a great office with lots of future potential,” he said.