EKU’s Board of Regents approved the school’s yearly budget during a Wednesday meeting.
It’s around $430 million in total, a $29 million increase from last year. It includes a 2% raise for staff and faculty, and $1.5 million dollars towards razing the Hummel Planetarium. Of the total budget, 39% is going towards its general and education fund.
“I think that we've got a really thoughtful and responsible budget,” said EKU President David McFaddin. “I think it moves us forward and helps to meet the expectations that the board has laid out for us to meet.”
But some parts of the budget were criticized by students and faculty, including a cut of around $3 million to academic affairs.
Lynette Noblitt, a Board of Regents member and faculty representative, said that would cut summer salaries for faculty members teaching summer classes by 20%. She was the lone dissenting vote against the budget proposal.
“That will mean for every single faculty member in my department that the 2% across the board raise will actually result in a net negative,” she said during the meeting. “They will have less income coming in over the full year period because of that.”
It would also cut stipends for program coordinators who oversee accreditation.
“I've received several emails from program directors saying they do not plan to continue,” Noblitt said. “I even had one at the faculty meeting today who said that it just simply did not make financial sense for them to continue.”
Patience Grubb, an EKU paralegal student who attended the meeting, expressed concerns it could impact her studies.
“To receive a cut from what is already spread so slim, I fear that I won't have professors that are going to be teaching the programs that I need to finish this degree, even,” Grubb said.
McFaddin says those cuts are meant to make the school more efficient, and that the money is being reinvested elsewhere. He’s confident the school will be able to keep their programs accredited moving forward.
“We're not going to put accreditation at risk for any program based on whether or not we have a program coordinator,” he said. “How we manage having a coordinator, who the coordinator is, and how we kind of get there, I think is something that we can navigate.”
