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And the cuts have started…

College of Engineering faces $900,000 in budget cuts for 2017

The College of Engineering will face about $900,000 worth of budget cuts — 5 percent of the college’s total budget — for fiscal year 2017, Dean Elizabeth Loboa announced at a faculty open forum in Lafferre Hall on Thursday afternoon.

The cuts come a day after MU Interim Chancellor Hank Foley announced hiring freezes and 5 percent cuts to MU’s total 2017 fiscal year budget.

The engineering dean’s office announced the open forum Monday and said there would be both human resources and benefits representatives present. The announcement and Foley’s “bummer memo” made staff and faculty members fear massive layoffs, Loboa said.

Loboa said one faculty member joked: “Are you going to have security at the meeting?” But she reassured the group at the meeting that there’s “nothing like that going on.”

Instead, Loboa listed 11 cost-saving measures and goals amounting to roughly $500,000 to $700,000 in cuts. The college still has to come up with between $400,000 or $200,000 more to meet the $900,000 mark.

Six non-tenure-track faculty members were told prior to the meeting that their contracts would not be renewed , Loboa said. Even after those, “we may still have to do layoffs,” Loboa said.

http://www.columbiamissourian.com/news/college-of-engineering-faces-in-budget-cuts-for/article_c3f171c8-e728-11e5-a672-979e74b4fd6f.html

Loboa acknowledged that the cuts came at a politically difficult time when the university is fighting for money with the state legislature.

“We got here because of the protests and the backlash and Melissa Click,” she said. “This university is a 177-year-old institution. We’re a great university, and we’re going to survive that.”

While the Dean is willing to point out the elephant in the room, Admissions still finds other reasons for the drop in enrollment…

Interim Vice Provost for Enrollment Management Barbara Rupp said the university has received 3,733 deposits for fall 2016, down 23 percent from the amount it had at this time last year. A deposit is the fee admitted students pay to enroll at MU and access housing and orientation, but it doesn’t guarantee the student will attend.

“The situation for next year is grim,” MU Faculty Council chair Ben Trachtenberg said.

Rupp said a lower number of high school graduates and competition from other universities were among the factors driving the decline.

Although students can enroll at MU through late summer, the university has about a month to increase total enrollment, she said. Most students make their final choice at this time of year, she said.

“It’s not a very rosy outlook,” Rupp said.

http://www.columbiamissourian.com/news/higher_education/mu-faculty-council-discusses-enrollment-decrease-and-budget-issues/article_e6dbaa34-e717-11e5-a9a7-23e6779ba09e.html
The huge decrease in enrollment is due to competition and that drop in the number of high school graduates, nothing to see here, move on…