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in The Nevada Sagebrush.

By Jessica Fryman and Jay Balagna

CARSON CITY — The University of Nevada, Reno will likely see the closure of more than a dozen degree programs, the elimination of a major college and the loss of about 75 faculty members by Fall 2011.

The search is on to find $11 million to cut from UNR’s budget (nearly $50 million from higher ed) since state leaders passed a 6.9 percent cut to higher education yesterday — a figure UNR officials call “fantastic” compared to initial proposals as high as 22 percent just two weeks ago.

The Board of Regents will meet Thursday and Friday in Las Vegas to start discussing the options for each of Nevada’s eight higher ed institutions. The board will hold a special meeting April 16 to vet out each college’s proposals, and then follow up with final decisions in June. These meetings could include discussions about whether to raise tuition (which has already increased almost 40 percent in the last five years) in order to make up for some of the cuts.

UNR’s plan, released yesterday, came just hours after the Legislature ended its six-day special session. Lawmakers met for 15-plus hour days in closed-door meetings and budget hearings before cutting state services and increasing fees to make up for what turned out to be an $805 million deficit.

But the special session was merely a band-aid and “temporary fix” for what’s to come in 11 months. Nevada’s revenue is down 50 percent, and legislators estimate the need to solve a $3 billion shortfall in next February‘s regular session.

Before university officials can start brainstorming about the next round of cuts, however, administrators still need to implement the probable $11 million cut to UNR, a loss that comes after cutting $33 million throughout the last two years.

The road toward cutting $11 million

The plan UNR’s administration released Monday, which still needs to go through months of review, includes narrowing the College of Education and closing the College of Agriculture, Biotechnology and Natural Resources, among other drastic changes. And the plan doesn’t fill the entire budget hole UNR is expected to face.

The proposal only contains cuts to academic programs for now and excludes cuts to student services and other areas of the university to be decided at a later date.

Cuts to academic programs were decided on using a process laid out by the Board of Regents that includes considering the number of degrees a program grants and its overall importance to the university, UNR President Milton Glick said. That left small programs at risk unless they taught core classes, like math for example, he said.

The plan eliminates all foreign languages except Spanish, along with other degree programs. While this reduces the scope of the university, small enrollment in those programs meant cutting them impacted few students, Glick said. Students will still be able to take entry-level courses in the cut languages to fulfill foreign language credits, but will not be able to minor or major in them.

The elimination of CABNR would merge some of its programs into the College of Science. Specialty programs from the College of Education are cut in the plan; instead, the school would focus on producing general teachers. Education Doctoral programs would also be cut.

Aside from lost programs, the plan also eliminates about 75 faculty members by Fall 2011, when the changes are scheduled to take place.

“I expect a lot of people are going to be very unhappy with these proposals,” Glick said. “Nobody is going to greet this with joy.”

Glick said most of the cut programs will likely never return to the university.

“Recovering (from years of cuts) is not restoring these programs,” he said. “If you say you’re going to do this and restore them later, that’s not honest. It’s not realistic.”

How state leaders balanced the budget

Although students and faculty “will still feel an impact” with the 6.9 percent cut, driving that figure down from the 22 percent proposal was not an easy task for state leaders last week, lawmakers said.

The budget bill, which passed just after 2 a.m. yesterday, came after several private meetings of nearly four-hours between Gov. Jim Gibbons and Senate and Assembly leadership, as the group with largely “different philosophical views” worked toward an agreement. Gibbons has yet to sign the bill but committed to it Sunday evening.

Aside from a nearly $50 million cut to the Nevada System of Higher Education, K-12 also ended up with a 6.9 percent cut. State employees will transition to ten-hour, four-day work weeks so offices can close Friday to save energy costs. The prisons will remain open. Additional furlough hours were excluded from the bill to save state employees from another pay cut after they took an 11 percent cut to salaries and benefits last session.

To reduce cuts from the governor’s proposal, the Legislature swept many state accounts, including part of the Millennium Scholarship fund. Mining and gaming licensing fees will also increase, along with a slew of other small fees.

“Everyone had to yield something,” Gibbons said about the deal that has “something for everybody to hate.”

State leaders applauded their ability to reach a “bipartisan package” in what Sen. Bill Raggio, R-Washoe County, described as the most difficult session he’s ever worked in since he started serving in the Senate in 1972.

Leaders applauded the public for the unprecedented amount of feedback through rallies, legislative testimony, letters and e-mails. Raggio apologized to his constituents at the budget deal announcement for failing to reply to e-mails because “he’s not going to live long enough” to respond to everyone.

Legislators also thanked the public for the many sacrifices that accompanied balancing the budget.

“This bill has a lot of compromise in it, a lot of tough decisions and really a lot of pain in it,” Assemblywoman Debbie Smith, D-Sparks, said before the Assembly voted 34-8.

The Senate’s sole dissenter of the bill, Sen. Bob Coffin, D-Clark County, berated his colleagues in a 25-minute speech before they took a vote.

“Don’t go home and congratulate yourself, because it’s not a job well done,” he said. “We could’ve stayed here a little longer and done a little better.”

Worse cuts expected in less than a year

Most agree the session was a Band-Aid fix that gives little movement toward dealing with the $3 billion shortfall to come in less than a year.

“This solution is temporary,” Raggio said of the special session’s balanced budget. “It’s going to be very, very difficult as we go down the road.”
NSHE officials said while they’re relieved the cuts to education weren’t as bad as expected this time around, they are already bracing for what’s  coming next.

“It requires eternal vigilance,” Regents Chairman James Dean Leavitt said. “And that’s the stand we’ll take. It’s going to be a battle and we will keep fighting.”

“We’re cut to the bone,” Glick said. “We are going to spend as much effort as we can muster to make sure the state looks at new sources of revenue and doesn’t keep resorting to these cuts.”

Many lawmakers vow to do what they can next session to keep education from further budget slashings.

As the session came to a close just after 2 a.m. yesterday, Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, urged the Assembly to think critically about what to do next as they plan to face even more difficult decisions: “This week’s challenge will seem like a picnic next session.”

This story was originally published in The Nevada Sagebrush
on March 2, 2010.