By Chancellor Reck appoints committee to provide recommendations
By DANIELLE MILLER
Staff Writer
A campus bulletin posted from the chancellor’s office on Jan. 8 indicated that IU South Bend will fall about $2.15 million short on the 2013/2014 academic year budget. “Enrollment is up 1% from last fall but credit hours are down 2%,” said Chancellor Una Mae Reck in a telephone interview.
According to the bulletin, Chancellor Reck appointed a Budget Working Group charged with providing recommendations for reducing next year’s campus budget.
Bill O’Donnell, vice chancellor for administrative and fiscal affairs, is co-leading the committee.
“We’ve had five meetings. We’ve been working on a list of ideas. We have been making progress. As the campus grows through enrollment we incur costs. More students means extra costs. We are just making adjustments,” said O’Donnell.
The final report by the budget working group is due to the chancellor by February 15.
“Universities deal with challenges over time. We also had budget additions in the last nine years. You have to be flexible and work with the times and decide the best use of resources utilized most efficiently and effectively. It sounds like a lot but our budget is high,” said O’Donnell.
The budget deficit will have no effect on the completion of the Education and Arts building or the Louse E. Addicott and Yatish J. Joshi Performance Hall upgrade in Northside.
“The Education and Arts building is part of capital improvement funds and the theatre is funded by donated money,” said Chancellor Reck.
Declining state funding and state appropriation are other factors leading to the deficit, she said.
While the chancellor confirmed the IU South Bend budget is completely separate from IU Bloomington’s budget, we still have one thing in common—state funding decreases.
In a Preface article written by Mandi Steffey on Jan. 14, these same issues are occurring on the Bloomington campus: “A student-run blog, http://www.IUonStrike.tumblr.com, claims that among the problems, students are concerned with the state’s funding of part of IU’s budget compared with the amount that tuition and fees paid for by students provides. As years have gone by, the state’s funding of schools in the IU system has gone down, forcing schools to have less to work with, and in result, raising tuition rates. According to the blog, tuition rates at IU have increased 45% over the last six years.”
The Preface plans to follow the story as it develops.
