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Wednesday, January 28, 2009
NMSU Planning for Poor Economy
Associated Press
LAS CRUCES — New Mexico State University's interim president has asked college leaders to develop budgets that assume a cut of $3.16 million, or 2.5 percent, in state funds for instructional and general budgets.
But Waded Cruzado said the school does not expect to have to put the plan into place because its $12.4 million in reserves would cover any shortfall.
NMSU's instructional and general budgets totaled more than $126 million last year.
The school is well positioned to weather hard times because of its financial prudence coupled with enrollment growth and retention, Cruzado wrote this week. Enrollment has grown about 7 percent since spring 2008.
The chairman of the Faculty Senate, Joe Pfeiffer, agreed with her assessment, but said that if cuts have to be made, everything should be considered.
"There's not a need to make radical changes, based on the cuts that seem to be coming down from Santa Fe and nationally," Pfeiffer said.
The chairman of NMSU's Advisory Council on Administrative Policy, Tim Nesbitt, said cuts are possible every year, but the message on campus is to sit tight.
"I think our budget's in good shape," he said.
On Monday, University of New Mexico president David Schmidly announced a pay freeze for himself and top university administrators and a freeze of all compensation increases to nonacademic administrative staff who earn more than $125,000 annually. He also announced moves to trim nonacademic administrative spending on the main campus in Albuquerque by 15 percent over three years and add at least 10 full-time tenure-track faculty positions.
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