NSU freezes jobs after funding cuts

Nicholls State University will maintain a freeze on most job openings and scale back funding from several areas within the university umbrella as it absorbs a $1.14 million mid-year state-funding drawback.

Nobody will be laid off or furloughed, but travel allowances, supplies, student labor, the number of available scholarships and operating services will be reduced, according to Nicholls officials.

University areas that receive funding from the state’s general fund, such as athletics, the Louisiana Center for Dyslexia and Related Learning Disorders and the Louisiana Center for Women and Government, will also have their funding reduced, officials said.

Nicholls has issued a freeze on filling job openings unless the position is deemed “critical to the core of the mission of the institution,” officials said. University President Stephen Hulbert said four years of funding cuts have “affected the institution greatly.”

“Because of the continuous reductions and threat of further reductions, morale is down n making it difficult to maintain faculty and staff,” Hulbert said in a press release. “Everyone has been doing more with less for four years.”

The University of Louisiana System proportionally split a $17.2 million reduction among its nine schools. Each university sustained a 5.1 percent cut. The UL System’s budget totals $336.2 million.

“Our campuses worked hard over the past three years to strategically meet budget reductions while protecting core functions and improving performance, “ UL System President Randy Moffet said in a release last month. “I expect our presidents will meet this five percent reduction with the same careful and conscientious approach.”

In total, public universities throughout the state shared $50 million in cuts in order to help close the state’s $251 million budget deficit.

State support to Nicholls has diminished by 38 percent since 2008, when the funding totaled $35.8 million. This year’s budget is complemented by $22.3 million in state funds.

“However, because of dedicated faculty and staff and a willingness to look at other ways to work smarter, the core of Nicholls remains strong and the institution will survive and flourish, even though the funding for Nicholls and all of Louisiana higher education institutions remains well below that of our peer institutions and other states,” the university president said.

Nicholls has reduced its faculty and staff by 100 people over the last four years and no campus-wide pay raises have been awarded during that time, Hulbert said.

Nicholls’ 2011-12 budget was projected at about $55.7 million last fall, down 5 percent from the previous year. The university used state-permitted tuition hikes to offset the continuing cuts, Hulbert said.

The 2010 Grad Act allowed a 5-percent hike for every school in the state based on performance-qualifying metrics and the second 5 percent is the final permitted rise from 2008 legislation.

The current year’s fall tuition increased to $2,368.35 for full-time, in-state undergraduates and $6,343.35 for full-time, out-of-state undergrads. Last year, it was scheduled at $2,145.85 and $5,757.85, an increase of $222.50 and $585.50 per semester.

Beginning next year, schools that meet 2010 Grad Act standards will be able to raise tuition 10 percent. The 10-percent increase will be granted each year until an institution meets the average of its Southern Region Education Board peers.