At other universities, furloughs and tuition increases seemed to be the quick fix solution. But this isn't the case at Ball State University.
On Friday, the Board of Trustees approved proposals to cut $15.2 million from Ball State's operating budget by June 2011. More than half of the cuts applies to employee health care plans.
The process to cut the university budget started three months ago when Gov. Mitch Daniels issued a $150 million budget cut to higher education in Indiana, which would be divided among seven state universities.
At the meeting, the Board approved all of University Treasurer Randy Howard's recommendations, which were the same as the ones presented during the campus forum Tuesday.
The cuts were a result of collaborative effort between Ball State administrators, governance committees and union members. Members of a union of non-instructional workers agreed to a pay freeze, which calls for no increase in base pay for the 2011-12 and 2012-13 school years. It also calls for a raise in base pay if both sides agree that any job category pays less than the market rate.
Board member Frank Hancock said after Howard's presentation that he was impressed with how things were handled.
"I can't begin to state how good this process was," Hancock said. "You were transparent. You were very conclusive to the whole campus."
He said he's recently been to K-12 school board meetings where budget cuts were discussed and all he kept hearing about was furloughs — unpaid leaves of absences — and cuts in staffing. At Ball State, however, the cuts won't require furloughs or increases in tuition.
"I said when we started this that we could come out of this a better university than we went into it," Hancock said.
Changes to the budget include increased deductibles in both the Low and High Deductible employee health care plans and an increase in the percentage of the total premium that new retirees pay if they retire before age 62. An increase of 10 percent will be effective July 1, 2012, and an increase of 20 percent will be effective July 1, 2014.
After that point, retiree health care premiums will return to the current amount.
For students' pocketbooks, the effects of the budget cuts will be minimal. Graduate students will now have to pay $30 per credit hour instead of $8, and undergraduates will have to pay $25 to apply to graduate.
Many of the cuts address long-term savings to the university and to its employees, such as a hospital steerage program through the Encircle Network, which Hancock applauded.
The meeting, held in the Founder's Room of the L.A. Pittenger Student Center, was crowded with university faculty and professional staff, but no students were there.
President Jo Ann Gora said she thought this was because students were satisfied with what they heard at the campus forum earlier this week. Hardly any of the university budget cuts will affect the amount of money students give to the university, and there will be no increase in tuition next year as a result of the budget cuts.
Board of Trustees student member Nicole Vauter said she was glad to be part of the process.
"Sometimes it's hard to be involved in a process like this because there's so much to it, but I think they did a great job of incorporating everyone at the university in the discussion," she said. "I think they came up with the best solution."
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