Money, Money, Money:

Image courtesy of progressive-charlestown.com

Concord University will be facing more budget cuts in the coming semester. Due to a loss of state funding, coupled with a less-than-expected retention rate of students, Concord has little choice but to make severe cuts to the budget.

“It used to be that more than 60% of our funding came from the state,” said Vice President of Business and Finance Chuck Becker, “Now, it’s less than 25%. The state decided to cut $220,000 from our budget. Back in 2009, we received about $10 million from the state. Last year, we got about $9.1 million, and now they’re going to cut us down to $8.9 million. They seem to care less and less about public education every year.”

Becker was quick to add that while he hates the cut to state funding, he understands why it has to be. “To be fair to them though, unlike the Federal government, the state cannot run on a deficit. Because coal jobs are drying up, the state is receiving less money due to fewer coal severance taxes, so there’s less money coming in. On top of that, the cost of Medicaid keeps going up, and new sources of revenue are not growing fast enough. The state cannot cut from everything, so they have to cut in areas where they can. Public education is unfortunately one of those areas.”

Currently, the Business and Finance Department is scrambling to find ways to see which areas to appropriately cut so Concord can serve its function and to serve its students in the best way possible. “We need a balanced budget, and to do that, we need to know how much money we’re planning on getting,” Becker explained, “So to do that, we use math to predict how much money will be coming in to the school. When we started at the beginning of the year, our revenue and our expenses were more or less equal. However, the numbers proved to be overly optimistic, and there have been two instances this year where we had to make adjustments to the budget. The first occurred in September, where we had to take from expenditure, such as not hiring for unfilled positions. We had to adjust operating expenses so no one was fired. When we looked at the projections for the current spring semester, we realized we had to find further savings so we wouldn’t spend money we don’t have. So, what we’ve had to do is go from department to department, cutting 1000 dollars here and 1000 dollars there, to keep going. These new budgets will be out soon.”

Mr. Becker stated that while he did not want to make these budget cuts, the current situation more or less forced him to do so. However, he also said he is willing to negotiate, and this new budget has wiggle room for certain things. “We’re trying to be fair, but also equitable with this new budget. Let’s say you’re working somewhere and you have a vacation all planned out, and your boss says due to the state of the company, he has to dock your vacation pay. You can still go on vacation, but you might have to cut back a little. Like instead of going to Disney World, you might go camping, instead. That’s what we’re trying to do with the budget. Each department is getting a cut.”

When asked about the wiggle room in the budget previously mentioned, Becker said, “Let’s say there’s money in the budget to upgrade new tech. We’re saying to not spend that money next academic year. If a repair is needed for a computer, we’ll put the money back into it so the repair can be. If you want to completely upgrade a whole lab, we’ll say don’t do it. It’s like what you’d do if you’re in any kind of financial trouble. You’d start saving by maybe carpooling, eating out less, and so on. That is exactly what Concord is doing now."

While it might seem like there is no chance for the budget situation to get better, Becker is optimistic for the future. “I don’t see the state being able to make up that tax revenue for several years. That’s the long and short of it. However, according to our projections, our number of newly enrolled students is expected to go up. Now, if we manage to keep some of the current students, we might be able to put some of that money back in.”

With that, he added, “College is tough sell in this economy. But we try to make it affordable. This uptick in new students won’t completely solve the problem, but it will take some of the pressure off. Let me stress that Concord University is not going anywhere. We’ve been around for too long and have too many good things going for that to happen. But we must adjust to the times if we wish to remain within the average student’s reach.”

Anyone that has questions or comments about the upcoming budget should contact Mr. Becker at beckerc@concord.edu or call at 304-384-5190, extension 5234.