The University of Illinois told the state House of Representatives it may have to cut 600 jobs from its three campuses, and Eastern’s interim President Lou Hencken told the House Eastern had cuts to make, too.

Public universities in Illinois have been forced to make many sacrifices since Governor George Ryan proposed base budget cuts for fiscal year 2003. Early calculations of next year’s university budget start off Eastern’s next fiscal year at about $600,000 less than where it started fiscal year 2002.

Hencken, Southern Illinois University president James Walker and U of I president James Stukel testified before the Illinois House of Representatives on March 7 about the possible impacts of the governor’s cuts to higher education.

“Where we have to make cuts, the academic quality must be maintained at all times,” Hencken told the Illinois House.

He explained Monday that Eastern is trying to handle the cuts carefully.

“One of the things which I said before the House and will say before the Senate is that we’re taking a long hard look at positions open in non-academic areas,” Hencken said. “One goal I had all along was to increase number of students and we’ve got to get classes for these students.”

Laying off employees isn’t in the plan, Hencken said.

“The budget for next year is going to put constraints on the university and make us make decisions we wouldn’t want to make,” he said. “But we would rather not fill positions than go with what U of I was talking about with laying people off.”

Jeff Cooley, vice president for business affairs, said Eastern isn’t laying workers off, its just not filling positions that have been vacated or will be vacated.

“We’re not necessarily eliminating current filled positions,” Cooley said.

The open jobs may or may not be permanently unfilled, Cooley said, but guessed that they would be reinstalled once the economy turned around.

“The crystal ball for fiscal year 2003 is still cloudy,” Cooley said. “I don’t know if I can forecast whether its permanent or temporary.”

The U of I system would cut 190 positions, perhaps even if its proposed 10 percent tuition increase is approved, U of I president James Stukel told the Illinois House. Those layoffs would increase class size, said university spokesperson Lex Tate.

“The repercussions are pretty easily understood. When the budget is cut, then you have fewer teachers and you have larger classes,” Tate told the AP. “What it means is the others are left to pick up the slack.”

Like Eastern, U of I isn’t planning a layoff, but is losing employees through attrition, Tate said March 8. The system employs more than 23,000 people and has a “fair amount of turnover,” she said.

The fates of specific decisions lie in the hands of the departments, Tate said. She stressed that important factors the university system will consider are protecting patients of the hospital at the Chicago campus and students at all campuses.

“It’s more likely an administration unit would take a bigger hit,” Tate said.

The distribution of the 600 jobs is uncertain, Tate said, but the Urbana-Champaign campus has already left about 250 open.

Like Cooley, Tate said whether the positions are ever filled depends on whether the university ever gets the money back.

“A position only exists as long as there are dollars attached to it,” Tate said.

Hencken was optimistic about the possibility of an economic rebound.

“You go through good times and you go through bad times,” he said. “During bad times, you tighten your belt and realize that good times are only a year or two away.”

Eastern started off fiscal year 2002, which began July 1, 2001, with an operating budget of $81,992,600 in tuition revenue and state funds. Gov. George Ryan cut $624,000 of that, a cut he plans to make permanent. After passing the bill for university employees insurance from Central Management Services to higher education, Eastern was left with a $79,655,300 operating budget for this fiscal year, according to a chart created by Kim Furumo, director of the budget office.

When Ryan unveiled his budget for fiscal year 2003, he made another cut to Eastern’s base budget totaling over $2 million, the chart said. Add that to the first cut and another employee insurance bill and Eastern lost about $4.4 million.

After making cuts to the base, Ryan increased Eastern’s state funds by about $900,000. Furumo predicted an increase of about $2.9 million in tuition revenue in fiscal year 2003, allowing for a rise in enrollment by 50 and tuition and the start of per-credit hour tuition for seniors and graduate students.

All of that means Eastern will likely have about $81.3 million in what Furumo called actual spending authority. She stressed that these numbers are preliminary, since enrollment figures are uncertain and the budget must still make its way through the Illinois legislature.

“If we have a higher (enrollment) increase than that, we’ll have extra money,” Furumo said March 14.

Hencken remained confident enrollment would increase dramatically next fall, saying that as of March 1, freshman application numbers were up 39 percent.

The conversion to per-credit hour tuition for seniors adds up fast, since next year’s senior class is nearly twice as big as other classes, Furumo said.

Although the base budget cut is severe, Furumo said, base budgets tend to go up and down with the economy.

“I’m more concerned about the group insurance costs,” Furumo said.

All that Illinois public universities know now is that they are paying the bill, which is for all types of insurance, this year and next year. No one knows yet whether that will be the responsibility of universities from now on, Furumo said.

The Illinois Board of Higher Education makes the final determination on how the cuts are doled out, but Furumo said she thinks universities are being cut proportionally. The IBHE will discuss various scenarios for the budget year at its April 2 meeting.

Eastern is hoping for some flexibility so it can distribute its funds according to priority, Furumo said.

Hencken said the approach to planning for the cuts will be similar to the way the administration created a plan for mid-year cuts last semester.

“Nothing is off the table,” he said. “Different things have different priorities. We’re going into everything with an open mind.”

The next few weeks, the President’s Council will try to draw up plans and share them with groups on campus, likely starting with the advisory subcommittees of the Council on University Planning and Budget, Hencken said.

Eastern administrators will be back at the capitol April 8 to testify before the Senate.