It's official - $15.2 million will be cut from Ball State University's operating budget by June 2011, and over half of that 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, which would be divided among seven state universities.
At the Board of Trustees meeting Friday, University Treasurer Randy Howard gave what hopefully will be his last presentation on budget cuts. The board approved all of his recommendations, which were the same as the ones presented during the campus forum Tuesday.
These 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 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.
Board member Frank Hancock said after Howard's presentation he was impressed with how things were handled.
"I can't begin to state how good this process was," he said. "You were transparent. You were very conclusive to the whole campus."
Hancock said he's recently been to K-12 school board meetings where budget cuts were discussed and all he kept hearing about was furloughs or unpaid leaves of absences and cuts in staffing. At other universities, furloughs and tuition increases seemed to be the
quick fix solution. But none of these are the case at Ball State.
"You know I said when we started this that we could come out of this a better university than we went into it," he said.
Many of the cuts address long-term savings to the university and to it's employees, such as a hospital steerage program through the Encircle Network, which Hancock also applauded.
The meeting, held in the Founder's Room of the L.A. Pittenger Student Center Ballroom, was crowded with university faculty and professional staff, but no students were there.
President Jo Ann Gora said she thought that was because they 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."
More Information:
To view slides from the second campus forum, visit bsu.edu, search "Budget Plan," and click "Slides from March 16 Campus Forum."
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