Southeast finance head looks at bright side of budget cut

You may never meet someone more excited about a budget cut.

Kathy Mangels, Southeast Missouri State University's vice president for finance and administration, knows it could be a lot worse.

"I'm thrilled with a 7 percent budget cut," she told the crowd gathered early Friday morning at the Show Me Center for the Cape Girardeau Area Chamber of Commerce's First Friday Coffee.

Mangels was the featured speaker at the monthly coffee klatch, filling in for her boss, Southeast president Ken Dobbins, who was called out of town unexpectedly.

Missouri's universities and colleges are breathing a reserved sigh of relief after Gov. Jay Nixon pledged to cut the state's share of higher education funding by 7 percent. Late last year it looked like Missouri's dire budget situation would mean higher ed funding reductions of as much as 15 to 20 percent.

Mangels, in her university update, said losing 15 percent of state funding would be financially equivalent to cutting operations at the university's College of Education and Kent Library. She quickly added that the illustration was purely hypothetical, offered as perspective.

A reduction of 7 percent would afford Southeast a bit more breathing room than anticipated, although there's a lot of negotiating and politics to play out before the legislature and the governor come to terms on the state fiscal 2012 budget.

Budget cuts have been a way of life at Missouri's institutions of higher education for the better part of the past two decades. Mangels said over the past 10 years, state appropriations per Southeast student have declined from $7,144 in fall 2001 to $5,232 in fall 2010.

The university over the past year and a half has trimmed 7 percent of its instructional budget and 8 percent of noninstructional budget, including job cuts. Employees have seen changes in their benefits, some arguing not for the better, and Southeast has restructured scholarships, all in the quest to reduce the university's budget by $20 million in the next few years.

"We can't continue to cut our way out of this," Mangels said.

Growth is part of the plan. Southeast has posted 11 straight years of record enrollment, adding programs to attract new students. To that end, Southeast recently debuted its first winter term, including 12 full online classes, Mangels said.

"We have to figure out how do we support our students without pushing the budget cuts on the backs of our students," Mangels said.

But Southeast students will bear more of the burden, it seems. Dobbins last week confirmed tuition could climb 4 or 5 percent in 2011-2012. Two executives from the Southeast Missouri State University Student Senate did not return phone calls seeking comment on the tuition increases.

Angela Meyer, Southeast's director of facilities management, provided an update on the university's massive campuswide renovation and maintenance plan. Late last year, Southeast's board of regents approved a bond issue topping $59 million to pay for renovations to the century-old Academic Hall, expansions to Magill Hall, the campus' aging science lab, power plant upgrades and deferred maintenance campuswide.

Meyer advised Southeast Missouri contractors to be ready for a busy bidding season in the weeks ahead.

"We will be doing construction this spring and for the next five years to address a multitude of problems."

mkittle@semissourian.com

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