Officials cite university as budget example for State System schools
CALIFORNIA, Pennsylvania -- Channel-surfing college football fans may notice one area team missing from this fall's TV lineup.
California University of Pennsylvania decided it no longer could justify spending up to $150,000 a season to produce and broadcast games played by its Division II Vulcans football team -- not with classroom cuts looming.
Suddenly frugal Cal U also pared service on its Vulcan Flyer, a shuttle named for the school's mascot that used to leave campus stops every 10 minutes. Students now wait a bit longer, saving Cal U half a million dollars.
Still more money -- another $1.6 million -- was recouped by telling campus departments to return unspent money at year's end, suspending a practice that had let them amass surpluses, even in years that the university tapped reserves to balance its books.
These are a few of the ways, big and small, that a university once slammed for excessive spending managed in months to turn an $11.8 million deficit into a $5.8 million surplus. It enabled interim Cal U President Geraldine Jones to do this fall what some university presidents across the State System of Higher Education could not: pledge no professor layoffs.
State System officials have said Cal U's situation is not necessarily applicable to the 13 other member universities.
No comments:
Post a Comment