The UW Board of Regents addressed how UW System schools will deal with budget cuts at a meeting Thursday, saying the logistics of the $3.3 billion budget are misunderstood.
“In the past, we have not done very well at explaining our budget to the public,” President Jay Smith said.
The state Senate is expected to vote today to limit the UW System’s budget cut to $20 million over the next biennium. The regents say most of those cuts will come from reducing faculty and staff numbers.
“People comprise 83 percent of our expenses,” Smith said. “We are a people-intensive business. So when our budget is cut significantly, we can’t make ends meet without cutting faculty and staff. And when we cut people we reduce our instructional capacity to serve students.”
The regents stated that either enrollment or quality will be affected if the Assembly-proposed $108 million cuts go through.
“We could let quality slide and continue to take all the students who want to enroll,” Smith said. “We did that in the late 1980s, and no one liked the results.”
Smith said during that time many students were unable to get the classes they needed and had to stay in school for an extra semester or more to get their degrees.
The funding for UW schools comes from five general sources: auxiliaries at 20 percent, gifts at 11 percent, federal at 20 percent, fees at 17 percent, and state, which comprises 32 percent of the budget.
The regents said people are misled by the large size of its budget.
“During this process we have all gotten the question: ‘Why is a $100 million cut so bad when you have a $3 billion budget?'” Smith said.
But the regents were also quick to defend the legislators, empathizing with their tough decisions.
“I have found the legislator has a pretty good understanding of how this works,” said Regent Fred Mohs.
“We need the Assembly to understand we’re still on the same team,” he added.
The regents said UW will be able to restore its full economic stimulus package and enroll their full class of 133,630 students if the Senate limits the cuts to $20 million.
