Machen announces $47 million in UF budget cuts

UF President Bernie Machen announced long-awaited and already controversial plans to slash the university¿s budget by $47 million to cope with state revenue shortfalls last week.

About 430 faculty and staff positions will be cut under Machen's proposal, resulting in about 20 faculty and 118 staff layoffs.

About 290 of the faculty and staff positions were vacant positions from each college, and some positions will be funded by other money instead of state dollars. No tenured faculty will be laid off.

Plans to lower enrollment by 1,000 students each year for the next four years were also released. The number of transfer students UF invited for the upcoming fall semester was reduced by one-third, or 1,000 students.

All colleges and administrative units were instructed by Machen to prepare their budgets for a 6 percent cut. Machen said he left most of the budget decisions to the deans and vice presidents, but he said he did send some proposals back for reworking.

The $47 million cut, in addition to the $22 million crunch UF absorbed in October, makes UF's general revenue budget $69 million less than last year's.

The proposals will be voted on by UF's Board of Trustees, UF¿s highest governing body, during a telephone conference Wednesday morning.

UF's security programs and libraries were spared from the cuts. Machen said in a May 5 news conference that protecting campus-security initiatives was an obvious decision in light of recent U.S. college-campus shootings. UF's libraries are too essential to many academic programs to take budget cuts, he added.

The Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences took the largest monetary cut, losing $9.5 million in state funding next year. IFAS expects to lose 14 faculty and 96 staff positions, including about 66 staff layoffs.

"They have a large state budget," Machen said. "The cut that they were handed is 6 percent."

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences follows behind, cutting $5.97 million from its budget. CLAS expected 17 staff and 16 faculty layoffs, but due to a few resignations, the number of faculty layoffs has since decreased to 14, said Joe Glover, CLAS interim dean. Several degree programs across colleges will be cut, but students in those programs will be able to finish their degrees, he said.

Despite the layoffs, he said UF expects to hire 15 to 20 more faculty members in the 2008-2009 academic year because of money earned from the Differential Tuition Program, which allows UF to incrementally raise tuition 40 percent over four years starting with this fall's freshman class. A 6 percent tuition boost from the state Legislature and the 9 percent boost from UF will increase UF's tuition by 15 percent this fall.

The program stipulates that the money earned from differential tuition be spent toward hiring more faculty members in colleges where student demand is highest, he said. It cannot be spent to retain faculty slated to lose their jobs.

With the program, Machen said he would be able to hire 150 professors and counselors over four years. At a Faculty Senate Steering Committee meeting Thursday, Machen said he would ask the Board of Trustees for authority to reconsider some cuts after the Wednesday meeting if a convincing argument was made for an alternative move.

This news encourages John Biro, president of UF's chapter of the United Faculty of Florida, who said the proposed cuts were not made with enough explanation.

A Monday statement from the faculty union expresses concern about the proposal's effects on international studies, faculty diversity, doctoral programs and shared governance of academic programs between faculty and administration.

Biro said some of the choices slated for elimination are not in line with Machen's well-known goal to make UF a top-tier public university.

"Everything that's happening points in the other direction," he said.