UCCS is no longer cutting teacher salaries to help decrease university expenses from the state Joint Budget Committee (JBC) that is allocating more funding than anticipated, reducing the FY 2027 base reduction to $10.3 million.
According to Interim Vice Chancellor for Administration and Finance, Jeff Greene, the Executive Leadership Team (ELT) originally planned for a 5% base cut and decreased program-specific funding. The first budget plan assumed a $11.8 million deficit.
Greene was unable to provide how much funding UCCS is receiving from the JBC.
Despite a projected 2% decrease in credit hours, UCCS anticipates higher tuition revenue after raising in-state undergraduate tuition by 3.5%.
The University is also shifting roughly $3.3 million in student financial aid from one-time/reserve funding into the base budget.
To close the budget gap, the university considered many factors, including reducing at-will positions, using unallocated base funds from the colleges and eliminating unfilled vacancies, and ultimately determined salary cuts would be necessary to balance the budget equitably.
To reduce salaries, ELT had considered moving to a 51- or 50-week school year, and pay schedule, rather than 52, according to Greene.
Larry Eames, the digital curation and scholarship librarian and an assistant professor, said the cuts were “insulting.”
“The folks making the most money at this university were spreading the cuts out to those of us making some of the lowest salaries at this university to save their own paychecks when really they can eat a cut more than I can,” he said.
Eames compared this with salary cuts that occurred amid the COVID-19 pandemic where a 4.6% salary cut, and partial furlough was given to staff and faculty earning above $60,000.
Additionally, certain members of university leadership took a 10% pay reduction.
Compared to the cuts in 2020, there is little sense of working together for a greater goal, according to Eames.
Additionally, Eames said communication between staff and leadership has broken down in recent years.
“I simply don’t feel like I can talk to people in executive leadership anymore. They don’t feel connected to the university. They don’t feel like they’re engaged with the people that they’re supposed to be serving,” he said. “It’s exhausting.”
At the Healthy Campus Town Hall on April 13, Chancellor Jennifer Sobanet was asked by an audience member if employee salary reductions were still on the table, given the need arose.
“I would say that I hope we never, ever, ever have to look at that as a lever again,” she said.
Greene said the CU system is mandating tighter financial controls across UCCS, with the goal of reversing past decentralization.
The goal of decentralization is to shift portions of financial oversight from the colleges to leadership, so the ELT can have a better understanding of how the budget is allocated.
The lack of confirmatory language is still causing stress for staff, according to Eames.
“I think they’re trying to spin this as a longer-term reprieve than it meaningfully is so like, am I glad I’m not getting a pay cut this year? Sure, but it feels sort of meaningless,” said Eames.
Photo by Gabby Hensley on the UCCS Photography Database.