Ewu Hopes To Recruit Students And Reduce Programs But No Pink Slips Are Being Delivered Yet

Facing staff cuts because of low enrollment, Eastern Washington University is trying to beef up recruitment in the Puget Sound area while it decides which programs to discontinue.

“We must be more efficient,” James Hoffman, senior vice president for academic affairs, said Thursday. “We have to eliminate our own duplication.”

Pink slips have not been delivered yet, Hoffman and other administrators said. The number of employee cuts will depend on growth projections for the coming academic year and the number of retirements by senior faculty and staff members.

By June 1, however, administrators expect to have a plan for the coming academic year that gives employee groups the details of cuts needed among clerical and academic staff members.

Those decisions will depend, in part, on which programs the university decides to eliminate. Like all state universities, EWU is under pressure from the state’s Higher Education Coordinating Board to drop some of its programs with few students and low graduation numbers.

As many as 10 academic programs could be deemphasized or disappear.

“We’re going to protect areas of growth - education, business and the sciences,” Hoffman said. “The core liberal arts areas have some difficulties.”

Enrollment at EWU has been below state projections for two years. Using growth projections from the HEC board, the Legislature gave the university enough money for 7,739 students last year. But only 6,944 enrolled.

Although the university was allowed to keep the money from the state tax funds to cover the higher number, it did not receive nearly $3.2 million in tuition that those 800 missing students would have paid. In Washington state, universities get to keep all of the tuition paid by their students.

EWU cut the budget twice for the last academic year and dipped into reserves to cover the difference.

Washington State and Western Washington universities also had enrollments that were lower than projected. But neither was as large as EWU, either in actual numbers or as a percent of the total student population.

Last month, the Legislature said state universities that don’t meet their enrollment projections no longer will receive their full appropriation. In 1998, the state tax money those students represent would be placed in a reserve fund controlled by the HEC board to be used to boost enrollment.

Even though the potential loss of state funds is still a year away, a drop in enrollment this fall again will mean the university will receive less tuition than it needs to run all the programs it now has.

“It’s going to require a reduction in spending,” said George Durrie, director of governmental relations for the university.

The last significant round of staff cuts at EWU came in the two-year state budget cycle that began in July 1993, when the state faced a drop in tax revenues and the Legislature pushed the universities to cut costs while accepting more students. EWU cut more than 80 positions.

To increase enrollment this time - which would bring in more tuition and stave off the loss of state funds in a year - the university plans to recruit more heavily in Western Washington.

“We have never really had a West Side presence,” Hoffman said. Instead, EWU has relied on students from nearby communities to fill its classrooms.

That put the university at a disadvantage, he said. The number of college-age residents in Western Washington outnumbers Eastern Washington by about 9-to-1. And East Side students seem to have a different focus on their education after high school, with more looking for a direct link between school and a job.

One challenge will be to avoid cutting programs that have the potential to attract more students in coming years even if they have low enrollments now.

“We’re going to have lots of discussions,” Hoffman said. “There’s going to be a lot of anxiety.”

, DataTimes