The Red and Black

Issue date: 8/28/08 Section: News

MACE

Despite a statewide budget crisis, the University still plans to pump $26.6 million into building a new library.

"We get funds specifically allocated for these projects," Ryan Nesbit, senior associate vice president for finance and administration, said.

The administration has little control over funds that are restricted for specific purposes, including the $26.6 million allotted for the new library. Often, these restricted funds come from outside sources - such as sponsors and private contributors.

About three quarters of the University's total revenue is provided by outside sources. So when it comes to specific projects, such as student aid, public service, and other sponsored activities, the University's purse is far from empty.

"The greatest concern is being able to navigate through this without impacting the quality of this institution that everyone has worked so hard to achieve," Nesbit said.

The University's greatest source of funds come from the state - making up 38 percent of the total revenue - and the recent budget cuts gouged into those reserves.

A majority of that money is allocated to fund instruction and research, resulting in budget cuts in the classroom.

But it is not completely up to the administration as to where the cuts will be taken. Instead, the deans of each school on campus will be making those decisions.

The administration asked the deans to draft plans for how they would achieve a 6 percent reduction in their respective schools.

Senior administrators will review these plans over the next couple weeks and "ask the deans to articulate what type of impact the cuts will have on the core mission," Nesbit said.

Depending on the magnitude of the impact - with educational quality as a top priority - the administration then will determine where they can "provide mitigation, or restoration funding, to minimize the impact," he said.

Arnett Mace, senior vice president for academic affairs and provost, repeatedly has called the current budget situation "very fluid."

As money flows out from any one area, the administration is going to try to fill the gaps with restoration funding.

"There is no question that budget reductions of this magnitude will have an impact," Nesbit said. "We are trying to minimize that impact."

University President Michael Adams told the Gainesville Rotary Club on Monday tuition is too low, according to Access North Georgia.

Although the Board of Regents - the group that sets the University's tuition rates - approved an 8 percent tuition increase last year, it's frozen at that rate for four years.

"Effectively that's one and a half percent a year," Adams said. "You can't deal with labor at that level, you can't deal with energy at the level and you can't deal with health costs at that level."

"We need to get right on tuition rather than keep it artificially low," he told the Rotary Club members.

Although the Univer-sity's tuition rates are comparable to other Southern institutions, the state of Georgia charged the least for in-state tuition out of 16 states ranked by the Southern Regional Education Board.

Adams announced the same idea last September. But the Board of Regents is trying to keep the costs down, John Millsaps, the board's associate vice chancellor for media and publication, said at the time.

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