"Inside FAU" -
May 2009
(video
transcript)
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From
President Frank T. Brogan
Hello
again, colleagues, students and friends. I'm
coming to you today for another look inside
FAU to give you the most recent information
available on the budget crisis that we're facing.
We're all painfully aware of the fact that we're in
the midst of the most serious funding crisis in the
University's history, and I want you to know we are
presenting a plan to the Board of Trustees that
does three important things: It accounts for the
significant budget reductions we must absorb; It
creates a framework for next year’s budget;
And finally, it lays a sound foundation for the
years ahead.
In
may we got a glimmer of good news when the 2009
session of the Florida Legislature approved a
budget that reduced our funding for the coming
fiscal year by just under 17 million dollars
instead of the 38 million dollars we feared in the
worst case scenario. Keep in mind, however, that
this comes on the heels of nearly 20 million
dollars in reductions we’ve already absorbed
in the last 18 months; as you can see from these
numbers, we still face the necessity of reducing
expenses dramatically.
From
a personnel perspective, this has led to the
elimination of more than 140 unfilled positions
and, along with it, the inevitable reduction of
services to students, faculty and staff.
Certainly
cutting unfilled positions creates a hardship on
the entire institution, but, as you may know, for
months now the University community has been
wrestling with the even more difficult issue of how
many filled positions might have to be eliminated
to address the financial shortfall.
Today,
that number appears to be much smaller than first
feared, but it is nonetheless significant since
each position represents a member of the FAU
family. Our budget reduction plan calls for the
elimination of approximately 30 currently filled
positions.
Please
know that while this process will be difficult for
each of the affected employees, we have already met
with them and have committed to provide one-on-one
support and counseling to help each of them during
this difficult period of transition.
While
a majority of these positions are in the
administration and staff categories, it should be
noted that except for five faculty positions in the
College of Engineering and Computer Science that
are being eliminated as a result of a recent
college-wide reorganization, no additional faculty
members are slated for layoff. That means
we’ll be able to continue to offer a robust
menu of courses, which is important to our
students’ progress toward graduation.
On
the programmatic side, our college leadership teams
have been working closely with faculty and staff
during the last six months to evaluate the
continued viability of every degree program and
track. At the end of this exercise, we identified
approximately 45 majors that do not meet the
minimum standard of viability and have been
proposed for phase-out. Of course, students
currently enrolled in these majors will be allowed
to complete their studies during the phase-out
period.
We’ve
also identified opportunities for greater use of
technology, through online and distance learning,
to allow us to continue to offer certain programs
while achieving the efficiency needed to meet our
overall budget reduction.
In
addition to looking at how budget cuts affect
personnel and programs, we’re also working to
create a more efficient and effective delivery
system for support services across all campuses.
Every day our students and employees rely on
services such as admissions, registration,
financial aid, human resources, purchasing and
more. We’re looking at opportunities to
achieve greater efficiency by varying the approach
we take with support personnel and utilizing
technology to offer comparable access to
services.
There
can be no doubt that it’s always painful to
have to make decisions like these, but we all know
that continuing to operate the University under its
current economic structure is simply
unsustainable.
You
can read more about the
budget reduction
plan by clicking on the Budget Q&A link on
the FAU homepage.
As
we work with the Board of Trustees to plan for next
year and the years beyond, we’ll be utilizing
a multi-year budget planning approach for the first
time. This will provide some degree of
predictability for the entire University community
– students, faculty and staff.
To
get an overview of all budget components,
let’s begin with a discussion about revenue.
As you may know, the University’s overall
budget is over 500 million dollars. That’s
made up of funds from many sources, including the
state of Florida, the federal government and
tuition and fees from students. We’ve already
talked about the status of our state support for
next year, so now I want to focus on tuition and
fees.
For
the coming year, the state has increased base
tuition by 8 percent. In addition, each state
university is now allowed to levy an additional 7
percent differential tuition on top of that, which
means in-state undergraduate tuition could go up by
15 percent.
At
FAU, our original intent was to propose an increase
in tuition of 13 percent, based on the economic
circumstances of so many of our students. After
further consideration, however, we’ve decided
to recommend the full 15 percent, with the
additional 2 percent being dedicated totally to
need-based financial aid. This is due in part to
the fact that the legislature chose not to fund the
tuition increases in the Bright Futures scholarship
program for the coming fiscal year.
The
differential tuition will generate an around
900,000 dollars next year, and will enable us to
increase our funding of need-based student
financial aid by nearly a half-million dollars. In
the budget proposal that’s posted online, you
can see a projection of what a typical student
might pay while attending FAU during the next four
years.
In
addition to looking at tuition, we're introducing a
new approach for our local fees, which are also
designed to deliver benefits directly to students.
These fees include the activities and service fee,
the athletics fee, the health fee, the technology
fee and the transportation access fee.
In
the past, significant increases in individual fees
have been proposed on a rotating basis every two to
three years. For example, the health fee might go
up one year while the activities and service fee
would increase the next, and so on.
This
year, we’re proposing a new approach that
would incrementally raise all fees by smaller
amounts each year over the course of the next
several years. This will allow the University, with
guidance from students, to plan more strategically
how fee revenue will be invested to better serve
the students. At the same time, it will spread the
increase over several years rather than levying
larger increases all at once, making the financial
impact on students more manageable on a
year-to-year basis.
As
required, fee committees made up of a majority of
students plus faculty and staff were convened in
order to determine the size of each fee increase
and propose plans for their expenditure. You can
read more about the work of these committees in the
online budget proposal.
Taken
together, these increases in tuition and fees would
raise the amount that the typical full-time student
at FAU would pay by about $500 next year. While
that’s not an insignificant amount, I remind
you that there will be additional need-based
financial aid available, including Pell Grants,
which are slated to go up by $600 in
2009-10.
At
the end of the day, it’s not just about
budget reductions and proposals, but the very
future of our University. With that imperative in
mind, the University is launching an initiative
called Project Vision, and I hope you'll be part of
it. Over the next eight months, Project Vision will
provide an opportunity for you to help shape the
future of Florida Atlantic University. This
initiative is designed to engage the whole
University community, as you’ll see when the
website is launched. The Project Vision website
will give everyone who cares about FAU an
opportunity to submit their ideas about how our
University should look in the 21st century, from
the way we’re organized to the classes we
offer to the way we engage the outside community.
Your ideas are needed and are most vital to the
success of this endeavor. You'll soon receive more
information about this exciting collaborative
project.
I'd
like to close by thanking each and every person
who's viewing this video for their support of
Florida Atlantic University. We've seen some tough
economic times, and more of the same almost
certainly lies ahead, but I promise you one thing:
FAU will continue to evolve during this crisis
– not simply survive -- and will go on to be
an even greater institution in the years
ahead.
There
can be no doubt that this is a challenging period
in the history of our University and our country,
but it's also a time when people of vision have the
opportunity to step up and make a real difference.
We're going to seize that opportunity and build the
new FAU together. Thank you all so very
much.
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