Nicholls will have month to create new budget

Nicholls State University administrators must wait until the end of this year’s Louisiana legislative session to prepare their budget for the upcoming school year.

Meanwhile they are examining options for coping with potentially crippling budget cuts, including solutions that could take the form of tuition or fee hikes.

“The process is one of those hurry up and wait kind-of deals,” said Nicholls’ Vice President for University Advancement Neal Weaver. “They’re going to go into session in April. They’ll finish sometime in the end of May. Early June, we’ll have 30 days or so to put together a budget based on the information they give us.”

Until then, the involvement of university officials in the budgetary process is limited to talking with local representatives and providing information when legislators ask or “sometimes when they don’t ask,” Weaver said.

The university must compete with a myriad other voices in legislators’ ears, each with their own interests to defend in the battle over who gets what out of limited state coffers, Weaver said.

“Every constituent group out there that is part of the state budget has their own issues and concerns and they express theirs as well,” Weaver said. “So we’re just one of many voices that our legislators have to listen to and try to make the best decisions they can.”

Nicholls has provided reports on essential expenses like salary structures and also possible tuition and fees “opportunities,” Weaver said, which translates into potential increses.

“Under the governor’s proposed executive budget, higher education would receive a $608 million cut,” said Nicholls spokeswoman Stephanie Verdin.

According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, those cuts should amount to $141 million.

Weaver said that he’s heard so many different speculative amounts that all university officials can really do is continue with the budget that they currently have and prepare for any scenario that plays out after the legislature meets.

According to President of the University of Louisiana System Sandra Woodley, the state legislature has cut $700 million from higher education spending since 2009. About $293 million of those cuts were to the UL system, of which Nicholls is a part of.

In 2009, tuition amounted for 38 percent of UL’s revenue, but now tuition pays for 69 percent, Woodley said in a webinar on higher education funding in Louisiana.