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GREENSBORO — The new fiscal year came and went Wednesday, but the state budget is still in flux. At UNCG and N.C. A&T, that means more waiting as administrators, faculty and staff anticipate just how deep the budget cuts at UNC schools will really be.

Those officials could get a better idea of those cuts as soon as Monday. Administrators have to submit their proposed budgets this week.

“We’re not sure yet how bad the cuts will ultimately be, but we know the impact is going to be great and deep,” said Patricia Stewart, UNCG’s vice chancellor for university advancement. “No division is going to be unaffected, and ultimately we’re going to be losing some of the staff that have gotten us to this point.”

In May, UNCG Chancellor Linda Brady instructed her executive staff to prepare for a systemwide cut of up to 15 percent — a figure greater than the entire budgets of the UNC system’s eight smallest campuses.

In a letter to faculty, staff and students, Brady said she thinks the final cut will be less than 15 percent and that UNC President Erskine Bowles will work with the General Assembly to avoid such a steep cut.

“This is extremely difficult as we face record enrollments,” Brady said in the letter. “However, I believe it is important that we have as much time as possible to prepare for such a scenario should it materialize.”

Last week, UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Holden Thorp wrote a similar letter to faculty and staff in which he predicted a 10 percent cut at his campus, or a loss of $60 million.

Last semester’s mandatory 7 percent cut was devastating to the 16 UNC campuses, costing hundreds of jobs and the cancellation of several hundred sections of classes. In March, UNCG began eliminating 109 positions, including 59 faculty members. A&T began eliminating 66 positions.

All of that was as a result of Gov. Bev Perdue’s freezing all nonessential spending and travel and issuing an executive order cutting the annual salaries of all state employees by a half a percent. Faculty and staff at both universities said they expect further salary cuts in the coming year.

The spending freeze has remained in place throughout the summer sessions on both UNCG and A&T campuses.

Professors continue to deal with broken computers they can’t afford to fix and give exams on overhead projectors because no new paper can be purchased. Building maintenance has been put off indefinitely. Even essentials such as garbage pickup and the purchase of cleaning supplies has been scaled back and must be approved in advance.

Worst, many said, are the changes that will directly affect students’ educations. When part-time professors and teaching assistants were laid off last semester, more than 7,500 classroom seats were eliminated at UNCG with 275 class sections cancelled.

Sixty percent of freshman seminar classes — core classes all students must take — were canceled, replaced by large lecture-style classes. As students signed up for their classes before the summer, none were sure how many of those courses would still exist in the fall semester.

“I know that everyone is trying to make decisions that will affect the students’ learning experience the least,” Stewart said. “These are hard decisions. But I think we all believe that we’ll get through this, and things will get better.”
 

Contact Joe Killian at 373-7023 or joe.killian@news-record.com