Thursday October 25, 2001

Individual offices to be responsible for $10 million of $14 million cuts

The UA administration will decide by Nov. 5 which departmental budgets will be slashed to fulfill a $13.8 million university-wide cut.

Senior administrators set this date so cuts could be finalized by Nov. 13, when the state Legislature will meet in a special session to decide how to offset a two-year, $1.6 billion statewide budget shortfall, according to a memo sent to the Universty of Arizona community yesterday.

UA President Peter Likins has asked each university vice president - officials who make up the president's cabinet and oversee the university's nine major offices - to assign the cuts to the individual areas under their control, said Provost George Davis.

These offices include: Academic Affairs, Business Affairs, Health Sciences, Campus Life, Undergraduate Education, Legal Affairs, University Advancement, Research and Graduate Studies and Executive Operations.

The UA administration has already cut slightly less than $4 million, leaving nearly $10 million to be cut from lower-level budgets, according to a memo released yesterday by senior administrators.

Davis, the vice president who oversees academic affairs, said it is not yet certain exactly how much money each vice president will be assigned to cut. But the office of academic affairs, which includes all the UA's colleges, makes up 84 percent of the total university budget.

Davis will meet with college deans to identify which areas can be eliminated or cut back.

Based on this information, he will then decide which colleges must make the heaviest cuts, he said.

Although it remains uncertain which areas will be the most severely impacted, Likins has already said he opposes mandating across-the-board cuts that would hurt departments equally.

Senior administrators have already reduced funding for departments including the Integrated Learning Center and their own offices, and also plan to close the Arizona International College, to help offset the $13.8 million state-mandated cut.

A university-wide hiring freeze remains in effect through Dec. 1.