Eastern Connecticut State University Preliminary Budget FY 2016-17 Comments

The Eastern Connecticut State University Budget for FY 2016-17 is balanced, reflecting the continued support of our faculty, staff and students.

We are able to balance the budget primarily by continuing to hold various positions open for periods of time. Also contributing to our cost-saving efforts are several individuals who accepted additional responsibilities and are performing duties above their traditional roles. Our continued success reflects the dedication to our students that allows the university to operate and serve our students while we continue to work with limited financial resources.

Eastern did not use utilize the enrollment trend of a 1% decrease in enrollment for FY 2016-17 that was supplied with the budget package. We utilized our current trend for FY 2015-16 when compared to FY 2014-15 where we experienced an increase of 0.07% for full-time headcount and an overall FTE increase of 0.07%. We attribute this overall improvement to targeted enrollment management for the fall class combined with increased emphasis on retention. Our fall University Meeting focused on the importance of retention and provided insight into the levels of success reached by some of our academic departments. This provided some reference points for other individual departments and the increased awareness has helped to strengthen our overall retention program.

For the reasons mentioned above the enrollment numbers used to prepare our Preliminary Budget are at the same level of enrollment we experienced for FY 2015-16.

Our revenue budget includes all approved tuition and fee increases and the change in student accident insurance reflecting the FY 2016-17 anticipated policy pricing.

Personal services includes the impact of full-year employment for employees who were hired during the year with no increases included for FY 2016-17. Our staffing schedule indicates we will be higher in FY 2016-17 than the current projection for FY 2015-16 by six full-time staff. This increase in staffing is a combination of positions that were not filled in FY 2015-16 and some retirements that were not filled in FY 2015-16 and will be filled in FY 2016-17. We continue to only hire in positions that are key to the operation of the university departments or provide direct service to our students.

Positions included to be filled in the FY 2016-17 budget are 4 faculty, 3 positions within our maintenance facility group, 2 positions in administrative faculty, and a Chief Human Resources Officer to be hired at mid-year. These increases are offset in part by one position in the Library and several clerical positions throughout the university where individuals have retired and will not be replaced at this time.

We continue to operate with fewer maintainers than is recommended for a facility of this size as well as other positions that do not directly impact the students. Positions that provide direct support to our students, and are required for campus operations or public safety, are budgeted to be filled when current staff retires.

Other operating expenses for FY 2016-17 include additional funding to support financial aidoffset in part by carefully managing other expenses. We have budgeted our other expenses to be below the FY 2015-16 budget and slightly above the current FY 2015-16 projection. We are confident we will be able to achieve this level of savings with continued cooperation of faculty and staff, student accident insurance pricing, energy savings from new lighting projects, and reduced telephone expenses as we transition to the new voice over internet protocol.

Considering the possibility of another funding rescission in FY 2016-17, we begin with the reality that Eastern has continued to do more with less for an extended period of time. We have been fortunate to have had only minimum impacts to our students’ experience at Eastern and continue to provide them with a quality education at an affordable price.