University of Colorado senior Joe Ilacqua recently declared a minor in Italian to help him complete a linguistics major and fulfill his dreams of one day living in Italy.
But the Italian department and other low-demand programs might be on the chopping block if Referendums C and D don’t pass this fall and legislators again look at cuts in higher education to balance the state budget.
While administrators have not identified any departments for possible elimination, CU regents have asked for a list of programs that graduate few majors so they can start making decisions.
That leaves students and faculty in the low-demand departments wondering what Colorado’s flagship university will look like in the next few years.
“I want to go to a university that has good, solid programs, not just the programs that are the cheapest you can run,” said Ilacqua, a 38-year-old student who said he would have to learn another language and delay graduation if the program closed.
The Colorado Commission on Higher Education has asked all university and college presidents to plan for cuts should Referendums C and D fail and the state needs to find up to $400 million in savings.
Since 2001, the legislature has cut higher education by about $100 million as it sought to balance the budget. University administrators fear they will bear the brunt of any further cuts.
Community colleges worry they may have to close schools; Metropolitan State College is looking at a combination of tuition increases and program cuts; and Colorado State says it would have to raise in-state tuition by $1,000 to make up for the cuts.
But opponents of the referendums, which would allow the state to suspend Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights refunds for five years and increase the base of future state budgets, say the schools are engaging in scare tactics.
“They come up with the most Draconian cuts and then say if we don’t get our tax increase, we’ll cut all these services,” said Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute. “Look at the types of reforms (CU president) Hank Brown has already done. Look at faculty productivity and how many dollars actually get to the classroom.”
But most higher-education officials say there is no way to make up for any substantial cuts without cutting programs or raising tuition.
“We don’t begin to have that kind of money in the administrative budget,” Brown said.
CCHE spokesman Jason Hopfer said it will be up to the legislature to determine what to cut if Referendums C and D fail, but it is possible that some state schools will go private.
“The question is, do you privatize some schools, and which ones make sense,” he said.
While each school has its own potential solution, CU administrators are modeling three scenarios to determine the impact of $15 million, $37.5 million and $75 million cuts to the $150 million a year the school receives from the state.
Acting budget vice president John Bliss said tuition hikes, administrative cuts, additional fees or tuition for high-demand, high-cost programs, and closing low-demand programs are all options. But there will have to be enough savings in the low-demand programs to justify closing them, and those decisions likely won’t be made until after the November election.
“It’s not pretty,” he said, adding some budget options will be presented to regents as soon as September. “This will create a lot of campus unrest.”
At Metro State, administrators likely would handle a major budget cut by raising tuition, cutting every program by an equal percentage, eliminating programs or some combination of all of those, said president Stephen Jordan.
“I think everybody is believing it will pass, but we’re also planning for other alternatives,” Jordan said, declining to discuss specifics until he presents them to his board in September.
“We have not discussed eliminating specific programs. It’s just way too premature,” he said.
Community college system president Nancy McCallin predicts the state’s 13 community colleges would face a 68 percent cut in the worst-case scenario in which state funds would fall from $106 million to $34 million.
The system would have to raise tuition 74 percent to make up for that loss, from $72.75 per credit hour to $126.82 per credit hour. That means a full-time student would have to pay $3,800 a year, compared with $2,180 now.
McCallin said programs might be eliminated. She also didn’t rule out closing some colleges, a decision that would require a change in state law.
CSU would have to raise in-state tuition 31.5 percent, or about $1,000 per student, to recover a loss of $100 million, spokesman Brad Bohlander said.
CSU officials also would consider charging students based on their major – it costs more to educate business and engineering students than it does history majors, Bohlander said, and the university would consider cutting programs.
CU cut majors in geology and German at the Denver campus in 2002, but allowed students to finish their degrees. The university also did away with a telecommunications program and a tourism certificate program in the business school at the Boulder campus.
The faculty in the Italian program point out that for about $200,000 a semester, their classes are attended by hundreds of students in disciplines ranging from international studies to film.
“It is a very inexpensive program,” said Andrew Cowell, chairman of the French and Italian department. “We’re teaching enormous numbers of students with very few professors.”
Administrators looked to cut Italian in 2000, but it was spared.
Cowell and his faculty say the program has increased majors and minors in the past five years, and worked hard to improve the program.
“How can you stand up and call yourself an intellectual university if you don’t teach Michel angelo and … Dante,” he said.
Staff Writer Arthur Kane can be reached at 303-820-1626 or at akane@denverpost.com.
