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Kansas colleges dealing with cuts
The second part of our strategy was the concept of cutting the budget. We actually reduced about 1 million dollars worth of expenditures, impacting 30 positions. The third thing we did was we grew the campus. In fact, if you look at the reach in system, Fort Hays State University was responsible for 82% of the growth within the system, about 1400 more students are being served this year than last year, and over 1200 of those are at Fort Hays state.
Tuition also jumped from $92.50 to $98.20 per credit hour. The two reductions in budget this year have been handled out of one time strategic planning money. Hammond says they will wait to see what the legislature does when it convenes in January and then will employ the same strategy to build the budget for fiscal year 2011. He thinks there won't be more cuts but it could be possible if revenue projections are down. He thinks higher education has been cut as far as it can go without really damaging the system.
It doesn't have to be a large cut, but you look at negatively impacting our budget by the tune of 15% and you begin to impact then the quality and our ability to meet people's needs. I mean, you look around the country, California's higher education system has been cut more than we have, but they've had to go the next step which is deny admission, they've cut their enrollments by ten percent. And we don't want to do that in Kansas. It would be very detrimental if we had further cuts that cause us to have to turn people away from our institutions just at a time when they're going to need the education and the skills to be successful in this new economy as we rebuild the economy in the state.
In Liberal, the Seward County Community College and Area Technical School has also been juggling increased enrollment numbers with cuts in state funds. President Duane Dunn says their overall losses to the budget due to state cuts have been over a quarter of a million dollars. Tuition has not been raised in 5 years. The board and administration are trying to avoid raising it so that students can afford school. As Dunn says, community college is about access.
Next year, that's going to be the bigger challenge honestly because we know there's going to be less state aid. We're trying as best we can not to pass those reductions on to the local tax payer. We're keeping our mill levies as low as possible and at the same time we're faced with which is somewhat of an interesting problem we're faced with double digit enrollment increases, so we're serving more students with fewer dollars.
There are fewer classes offered and class size is larger. Online courses have become more popular and the college is teaming up locally to offer classes.
We've found more students are taking some options through online. We're offering some joint courses with Dodge City and Garden City Community Colleges. For instance, we have a calculus 3 class we're offering here and we broadcast that class to Dodge and Garden because we had 8 students here and they had 3 or 4 at their institutions, so we combined those. We do that with EMT, we have students here taking the class from Garden City. So our three institutions are also doing some things to make sure we're meeting the students' needs.
Enrollment is up in both the college and technical school which has helped bring in revenue. Dunn says they were prepared for the cuts so far but next year is more frightening because they don't know what to expect and if they can handle another double digit enrollment increase without making other adjustments to services they offer students. I'm Lindsey Fields, HPPR News.
© Copyright 2012, hppr
(2009-12-15)
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To date, state budget cuts have brought higher education funding back to 2006 levels. In Hays, President of Fort Hays State University Dr. Edward Hammond says since this time last year that overall between state general fund cuts and unfunded mandates their buying power has been reduced by 15%. Hammond says they'd been preparing for cuts throughout the year. They used a four part plan, the first part was efficiencies. They found savings by doing things like restructuring summer school to a four day work week with more classes online.
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The second part of our strategy was the concept of cutting the budget. We actually reduced about 1 million dollars worth of expenditures, impacting 30 positions. The third thing we did was we grew the campus. In fact, if you look at the reach in system, Fort Hays State University was responsible for 82% of the growth within the system, about 1400 more students are being served this year than last year, and over 1200 of those are at Fort Hays state.
Tuition also jumped from $92.50 to $98.20 per credit hour. The two reductions in budget this year have been handled out of one time strategic planning money. Hammond says they will wait to see what the legislature does when it convenes in January and then will employ the same strategy to build the budget for fiscal year 2011. He thinks there won't be more cuts but it could be possible if revenue projections are down. He thinks higher education has been cut as far as it can go without really damaging the system.
It doesn't have to be a large cut, but you look at negatively impacting our budget by the tune of 15% and you begin to impact then the quality and our ability to meet people's needs. I mean, you look around the country, California's higher education system has been cut more than we have, but they've had to go the next step which is deny admission, they've cut their enrollments by ten percent. And we don't want to do that in Kansas. It would be very detrimental if we had further cuts that cause us to have to turn people away from our institutions just at a time when they're going to need the education and the skills to be successful in this new economy as we rebuild the economy in the state.
In Liberal, the Seward County Community College and Area Technical School has also been juggling increased enrollment numbers with cuts in state funds. President Duane Dunn says their overall losses to the budget due to state cuts have been over a quarter of a million dollars. Tuition has not been raised in 5 years. The board and administration are trying to avoid raising it so that students can afford school. As Dunn says, community college is about access.
Next year, that's going to be the bigger challenge honestly because we know there's going to be less state aid. We're trying as best we can not to pass those reductions on to the local tax payer. We're keeping our mill levies as low as possible and at the same time we're faced with which is somewhat of an interesting problem we're faced with double digit enrollment increases, so we're serving more students with fewer dollars.
There are fewer classes offered and class size is larger. Online courses have become more popular and the college is teaming up locally to offer classes.
We've found more students are taking some options through online. We're offering some joint courses with Dodge City and Garden City Community Colleges. For instance, we have a calculus 3 class we're offering here and we broadcast that class to Dodge and Garden because we had 8 students here and they had 3 or 4 at their institutions, so we combined those. We do that with EMT, we have students here taking the class from Garden City. So our three institutions are also doing some things to make sure we're meeting the students' needs.
Enrollment is up in both the college and technical school which has helped bring in revenue. Dunn says they were prepared for the cuts so far but next year is more frightening because they don't know what to expect and if they can handle another double digit enrollment increase without making other adjustments to services they offer students. I'm Lindsey Fields, HPPR News.
© Copyright 2012, hppr
