A month after Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine (D) announced budget cuts for state universities, University deans are still finalizing how budget cuts will affect professors, departments and students on Grounds. Already feeling the weight of economic downturn and statewide cuts made last year, department heads have only a few more weeks to revise their budgets and plan for an uncertain economic future.
By the numbers
In his executive spending reduction plan, announced Oct. 9, Kaine reduced commonwealth spending by $348 million, which includes a reduction of 7 percent, or about $10.6 million, in money allocated to the University. The report said the total cuts would result in 570 commonwealth job layoffs, the elimination of 800 vacant positions and a freeze on new hiring.
While the University has not implemented a hiring freeze, said Colette Sheehy, vice president of management and budget, cuts are being made. Though the University does not rely on commonwealth funding as heavily as other public institutions, significant budget cuts will be made, and each school will submit a revised budget plan to account for the reduction in funding.
The University depends on many coffers, namely state tax funds, tuition, endowment income, gifts, research grants and contracts, student fees and outside revenues, Sheehy said. The academic division operates on an annual budget of $1.2 billion, and the Medical Center and University at Wise rely on a $2.2 billion budget, she added.
Faculty salaries have not been cut, and promotions and progressions along the tenure track continue despite budget revisions, Sheehy said, noting that although administrators had anticipated cuts in commonwealth funding, they did not know how large they would be.
“Units are holding positions vacant,” Sheehy said. “Some schools have cancelled faculty searches for the next year. We are deferring discretionary expenditures like travel, professional development, equipment and building maintenance.”
Up to the deans
The decision of how and where cuts will be made belongs to the deans of individual schools, Sheehy said.
“The University has not centrally mandated a hiring freeze that Governor Kaine put in place for other state agencies, preferring instead to allow our deans and department heads to manage their budgets according to their needs,” Sheehy said. “We have, however, encouraged our managers to maintain flexibility in their budgets until the entire budget situation becomes clear. This includes holding positions vacant so that when the current year cuts are made, and we are likely faced with additional cuts next year, we do not have to lay people off but rather can eliminate personnel costs through attrition.”
For the Architecture School, these cuts are already prompting attrition of positions, Architecture Dean Karen Van Lengen said.
“We already have cut so much of our budget in the last five years, there’s nothing left to cut anymore except taking positions away,” Van Lengen said. “We expect to lose at least three faculty positions that are now unfilled.”
The impact of budget changes on individual schools hinges on how heavily each school depends on state funding.
The University receives about 7 percent of its funding from the state. Yet the Architecture School, for example, receives 68 percent of its funding from the state, Van Lengen said.
With the cuts, the school will lose about 6 percent of its funding due to state budget cuts, which amounts to $422,000, she said.
Van Lengen explained that the three positions to be terminated are all within the architecture discipline and were vacated when three faculty members left the University at the start of the year. Searches to fill the positions are now off.
Positions dependent on commonwealth funding have been targeted in the Education School as well, Education Dean Robert Pianta said.
“In terms of hiring, we have had to stop searches for positions that would be supported by state funds; but at the same time we are going forward with searches that are funded through sources such as philanthropy,” Pianta stated in an e-mail.
The Education School has not cut programs or staff, Pianta noted.
His office has “made it a priority to preserve funds for supporting the scholarly and instructional work of faculty, such as seed funds for research, international work, and teaching, as well as modest support for travel,” he stated. “We have been extraordinarily precise and careful. The faculty have been working hard to plan courses, look for redundancies and overlap and streamline and consolidate.”
College Dean Meredith Woo said she submitted her reduction plan but would not elaborate on budget revisions in various departments. Woo said her office gave target numbers to various departments for this academic year and the next year as they decide where to limit costs.
“I prefer to think of it as delays, rather than cuts,” Woo said. “There will be delays ... in some searches for faculty members, and where they are delayed is very carefully laid out.”
Woo explained that department chairs think strategically and look ahead to determine where to make cuts and where they can afford to delay job searches.
She added that close examination of budgets affords department chairs the opportunity to learn more about how their units function financially.
“As we adjust ourselves to the financial realities ... we ask ourselves what our priorities are,” Woo said. “The entire exercise for the College is difficult but educational and important.”
The road ahead
Final budgets are still being compiled, and deans and department chairs have a few more weeks to make changes to their plans, Sheehy said.
“All of the detailed budget reduction plans have not yet been submitted, so it will take several more weeks before we know exactly how the units and schools have accomplished the reductions,” Sheehy said.
Although cost-cutting measures will be determined on many fronts, some schools can foresee how their revisions will affect departments and students. Van Lengen said that for the Architecture School, the cuts represent the most recent constraint on a budget already lacking wiggle room.
“We lost one position last year, in urban planning ... now we’re going to lose three more in architecture,” Van Lengen said. “We’re eroding one of our great schools with these budget cuts.”
Though Van Lengen never wants to eliminate faculty positions, she said, there were simply no corners left to cut.
“Since I’ve been dean, this is the third major budget cut,” Van Lengen said. “Each time we had a budget cut, we took away as much as we could from our operating expenses, the way in which we delivered our services to the whole school. There’s nothing left to give back. We’re now at a point where ... there’s no choice, there’s nothing left.”
Students will feel the budget cuts through fewer course offerings and more students per class, Van Lengen added.
“We’re in the process of trying to work with everybody to try to see what would be the best way to deal with the budget cuts,” Woo said. “Do the course offerings need to be restructured, do the programs need to be restructured?”
Even the Law School and Darden School, which do not receive commonwealth funds, are impacted by the economic downturn.
Law School Dean Paul Mahoney stated in an e-mail that economic conditions could affect private fundraising and the amount of financial aid students need.
“That in turn will affect hiring and compensation because personnel costs are the largest single item in our budget,” Mahoney said. “In addition, the state determines the salary increases for all classified staff at the University, and we are bound by the state’s decision to freeze classified staff salaries.”
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