SEMO'S BUDGET REDUCED

A new round of state budget cuts totaling nearly $71.4 million will force Southeast Missouri State University to chop another $942,325 from an already scaled-back budget, university officials said Friday.

Including this latest round, Southeast has experienced $2.83 million in budget cuts for the 1992 fiscal year, the largest budget reductions in the school's history, university officials said.

"This is very serious," Southeast President Kala Stroup told reporters gathered in her office Friday afternoon. Also on hand for the informal press conference were Art Wallhausen, assistant to the president, and Kenneth Dobbins, vice president for finance and administration.

Stroup said students can expect a tuition hike for the spring semester and additional tuition hikes in the future if the funding situation doesn't improve.

"We will have to turn to students again for at least some share of bearing the costs," she said.

In addition, she said, the university will extend its hiring freeze and make additional cuts in operating budgets. The university, she said, had cut back on part-time faculty positions for the fall semester and additional cuts will be considered for the spring semester.

"It will significantly reduce the services we are able to offer," the president said.

Stroup vowed that Southeast will try to keep any tuition increase as low as possible. She said university officials have not yet determined how large an increase will be needed for the spring semester.

Stroup said some universities are looking at raising the cost per credit hour by $1 for every 1 percent budget cut. Northwest Missouri State implemented such a plan for the fall semester, she pointed out.

Southeast's students are already paying substantially more in incidental fees and room-and-board charges as a result of increases approved by the Board of Regents earlier this year.

Full-time Missouri undergraduates at Southeast are now paying $858 a semester in tuition, an increase of 15 percent. Full-time non-resident undergraduates are paying $1,578 a semester, a 9.2 percent hike over the previous tuition charge.

Total room-and-board fees for beginning freshmen and other students with new housing contracts this fall amount to a maximum of $2,825, a 10.8 percent hike over the maximum room-and-board fee of $2,550 for the previous school year.

The latest round of budget withholdings are necessary to fund multimillion-dollar building projects ordered by U.S. District Judge Russell Clark as part of the long-running Kansas City school desegregation case, state officials said. The order is being appealed but state budget planners said they are prepared to slice the money from Missouri's $8.9 billion spending blueprint.

The withholdings will mean spending cuts of 3 percent across the board for all state agencies.

State funding for Missouri's elementary and secondary schools will be slashed by nearly $35.4 million, and higher-education outlays will be cut by about $18.3 million.

Most of the reductions would take effect Oct. 1, although the funding cuts for elementary and secondary schools would not occur until January, state officials said.

"Now this means we have to pull the (university) budget out and redo it one more time," Stroup said of the budget cuts.

University officials had developed a budget that anticipated state funding of $30.7 million for general operations, the same as for the previous fiscal year that ended June 30.

That figure was based on the assumption that Gov. John Ashcroft would withhold 3 percent of a $31.7 million base appropriation.

Instead, the governor earlier this summer vetoed 1 percent of the university's operating budget and withheld another 5 percent.

The latest 3 percent reduction means Southeast will have to operate on a state appropriation of $28.89 million, which is the lowest appropriation for the university since the 1989 fiscal year, Stroup said.

"With an almost 20 percent inflation factor, we are operating three years later with basically the same dollars," she said.

Stroup said she had not anticipated the latest round of budget cuts, which were announced Thursday.

Stroup said the budget cuts will hurt education statewide. "I think Missouri will suffer," she said. "Today, when education is so important, you have to make a lot of progress and this is not progress."

Stroup said the current generation of college students is having to bear a much greater share of the cost of attending college than previous generations of students did.

"Every time you reduce it (the budget), you are pricing people out of the market," said Stroup, explaining that universities by necessity must increase the fees charged students.

"This generation is bearing a very heavy cost of attending college," she stated. "This generation is not only borrowing more, but bearing more of the cost."

In addition to being saddled with higher fees, students are losing out because public colleges and universities are having to cut back on student labor expenses to make ends meet, she said. Many students, she explained, depend on campus jobs to help them pay for the expenses of attending college.

Stroup said she has asked Southeast's deans and vice presidents to examine their budgets and look for ways to further trim costs.

"I doubt very much that there is very much there" to cut, she added.

She said the university administration must now decide on specific budget cuts to recommend to the Board of Regents. Those recommendations will be presented to the board next month.

(Some information for this story was provided by The Associated Press.)