The University of Arkansas at Little Rock has found $1.5 million more to save from this year's budget, this time through unused scholarship money, recently vacated positions and lower utility bills.
The savings at the shrinking university were announced Thursday to campus employees. They include $550,000 in scholarship money intended for high school students who concurrently enroll at the university. That money won't be used in the spring semester, which started last month, the university determined.
In an email to employees, Chancellor Christina Drale said many of the rollbacks, such as $200,000 in utility savings, are in effect only for this year and will be reevaluated for next year.
In this round of cost-cutting measures, no one was laid off but vacant positions won't be filled.
UALR originally projected an $11 million deficit this year and planned to cover about $6 million of it using reserve funds. An audit last fall prompted some budget revisions in January that indicated another $2 million deficit. The audit found discrepancies in the university's budget that made it appear that the university had more money than it did. Correcting the numbers revealed the additional shortfall.
The university made its first fiscal year cuts in December, and plans another round this spring. Including Thursday's measures, the campus has slashed $3.3 million from its budget this year.
In her brief message Thursday, Drale thanked employees for their support and restated the nature of the university's ongoing recession.
"We will continue to work toward balancing our overall net position, but balancing the FY20 budget is the first step," Drale wrote.
Staff senate and faculty senate representatives didn't respond to requests for comment by Thursday evening.
The faculty senate has created a committee on academic retrenchment, or the reduction of costs in response to economic difficulty.
Drale informed University of Arkansas System trustees last week that she planned to ask them later this fiscal year for official retrenchment status for the university. That would allow her to lay off tenured faculty members as the university eliminates academic programs.
Faculty senate President Amanda Nolen told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette last week that the faculty senate would be heavily involved in the planning process for retrenchment.
Academic retrenchment requires a campus-wide consultation before cuts can be carried out.
The university's enrollment has plummeted from more than 13,000 students 10 years ago, when it was still the state's second-largest university, to about 9,600 last fall.
Drale has attributed the drop to years of previous university leaders assuming that the contracting student body was temporary, rather than addressing the underlying reasons for it.
Other cost-saving measures announced Thursday include $365,000 in property acquisition funds. Drale said those funds were budgeted, but no acquisitions were planned for using them.
The athletics department is reorganizing and plans to save $282,785 through freezing vacant positions and assigning additional duties to current personnel. Details of the reorganization, once complete, are to be announced later this month.
Although university officials have discussed moving employees out of two campus buildings to save on utilities, Drale said the $200,000 in expected savings does not involve closing buildings.
A Section on 02/07/2020