UM system president breaks down FY2018 budget

The University of Missouri System’s budget for fiscal year 2018 features hundreds of job cuts across the board in order to make up for millions in lost revenue.

UM System President Mun Choi highlighted several items that appeared in the budget and explained the necessity of cutting more than 400 jobs systemwide. The University of Missouri will have more than 300 jobs cut.

“I am so grateful for their service and whatever we can do to ensure they have productive moving beyond the University of Missouri, we want to explore that,” said Choi. “We wish it didn’t happen but we are also facing some fiscal realities that we have to address.”

Choi outlined budget targets for the system and broke them down for all four campuses. Budget targets are essentially money that needs to come from somewhere. The total budget target is made up of what can be considered cuts and also what costs are necessary to the university system.

Here’s a breakdown of that by the system, which has about $101 million in budget targets.

$35.9 million reduction in state funding $11 million reduction in tuition and enrollment $15 million increase in unavoidable costs, such as building maintenance $38.9 million increase in strategic investments, including increases in scholarships and stipends for students and strategic faculty hiring

At Mizzou, 135 faculty jobs will be cut, but the money from those eliminated jobs will be used for strategic faculty hiring. There will be about 160 new faculty jobs added, and Choi said those jobs will be essential to the university and part of the vision.

“It’s based on, primarily, on program efficiency and consolidation,” he said.

Interim Chancellor Garnett Stokes said the university was positioning itself for a more positive future and that the cuts had to be done in order to be fiscally responsible.

“The re-budgeting process is designed to strengthen the university in the long run and to prepare us for this future that is a bit different financially,” she said.

Much of the money reallocated by the cuts will go toward strategic investments, which include increasing and creating scholarships for students in order to grow enrollment.

You can find the system’s full budget here.