With a 9 percent budget cut in place this year and the possibility of an additional 17 percent cut next year, some at the U are worried whether the school can cope with the loss in funding.
U President Michael Young spoke to KCPW in October about budget cuts the U is facing next year and said the school cannot cut costs any further without sacrificing the quality of education.
“I think we deceive the people of the state of Utah if we say to them we can find efficiencies that will be possible and maintain the quality of this university,” Young told KCPW.
Take a humanities department for example. Although the worst of the cuts could still be on the horizon, the history department has already seen a notable decrease in the number of professors employed in its department. Since 2006, the U’s history department has lost eight assistant professors and gone from 33 faculty members to 25.
Janet Ellingson had been teaching two to three history classes a year for 12 years at the U as an adjunct8212;until this year, when she was informed during the summer that she would not be teaching this semester and learned a month ago that she would not be teaching during Spring Semester either. As an adjunct, she only works when the department can pay for her service.
“In a couple of months, I’ll probably learn that I’m not going to be used in the Summer Semester either,” Ellingson said.
She said people she’s talked to have been surprised that she and many other adjuncts are not being used by the U this year. She doesn’t know how the U’s history department would manage a 17 percent cut, considering the department’s faculty numbers have already been decreasing every year.
“You would think that (fewer faculty) would mean they would increase their use of adjuncts, but that hasn’t been the case,” she said. “How did they get rid of all those people?”
W. Paul Reeve, assistant chairman of the history department, would not comment on why the history department has steadily reduced its faculty or how looming budget cuts could affect his department.
The damage isn’t limited to that department. It’s only a microcosm of the fragile state the U is in after the 9 percent cut. A 17 percent cut could cripple it.
my Barrios, an assistant professor in medicinal chemistry, is worried that the budget cuts Young referred to on KCPW could hurt the U’s ability to do research. Young told KCPW at least the chemistry department would lose all lab technicians with the current proposed budget cut.
Barrios clarified that Young was referring to core research facility employees, who she said are necessary in the U’s research8212;and if they go down, so would the research.
“We would essentially be shut down,” she said, adding that these employees are responsible for tasks such as making peptides and running animal testing facilities. “We would have to send (these projects) out to other universities or something, but that would take a lot of time and would cost a lot of money.”
Barrios’ biggest worry is losing faculty at the U if an across-the-board salary cut happens, she said.
“Our best faculty could very easily leave for positions elsewhere, and we wouldn’t be able to do anything about it,” she said.
Greg Hughes, chairman of the Utah Legislature’s Education Interim Committee, said although the U is facing large cuts in budget, he doesn’t think the Legislature should help bail out the school.
Utah has about $500 million in its rainy day fund, and some of that money could be used to help state universities, he said, but he doesn’t think it will be enough to save the U from large budget cuts.
“I don’t think we can pull enough money out of people’s pockets and out of the economy to make happen what (U officials) say has to happen,” Hughes said. “What I hope to see happen is that we leave revenues where they are.”