Selling beer at Memorial Stadium during Volleyball Day in August, transferring oversight of Husker Athletics from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln chancellor to university system President Ted Carter and hiring Rodney Bennett as UNL chancellor grabbed the headlines when the Board of Regents met last week.
But what Carter, who became NU president four years ago, called “the most impactful day since I’ve been here, one of the most historic days ever” yielded far more than just the sports-related decisions.
He laid out a five-point plan to move the university forward at a time when it is facing budget cuts and a smaller cohort of possible incoming students.
The deficit, a $58 million budget shortfall, that came, in part, after the Legislature passed a 2.5% increase in NU appropriations rather than its 3% request, will be addressed by a series of carefully considered measures.
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The first of those, and the most noticeable, is the 3.5% tuition increase approved by the regents.
That increase will be combined with budget cuts that result from a system-wide look at “back office” operations, such as payroll, human resources, compliance and public relations that could result in consolidations, zero-based budgeting for non-academic departments to offset the deficit and other administrative belt-tightening.
“I want to stop the bleeding and get back on offense,” Carter told the Journal Star editorial board in a briefing last week.
That move to offense is laid out in the five-point plan, the first move of which is perhaps the most obvious – recruiting more students to NU, which would require reinvesting funds from other areas of the university, possibly creating a program that pays stipends to students across the state.
The plan would also bolster UNL, the NU system’s flagship campus for a very good reason: “How the flagship goes is how the university goes is how the state goes,” Carter told the board.
That UNL emphasis is most apparent in Carter’s focus on getting Nebraska back into the Association of American Universities, the prestigious organization of research universities.
UNL was voted out of the AAU in 2011, largely because of the way research expenditures are calculated in Nebraska. Specifically, research at the University of Nebraska Medical Center was not considered as UNL research, and agricultural research is not given priority by the AAU.
To start the reentry process, which Carter said would signal that Nebraska is “among the best of the best,” administrators will look at how UNL and UNMC research expenditures can be combined without merging the campuses. That would move NU’s national research ranking from 117th to 66th.
Nebraska will also have to recruit additional National Academy researchers to qualify for AAU readmission, further strengthening the flagship campus and, thereby benefiting the community of Lincoln.
The readmission process will likely take three to five years, and NU will have to be invited to join, but if it is, “overnight, we become a national player,” Carter said.
The plan also includes an examination of academic departments at all three campuses – Lincoln, Omaha and Kearney – to consider possible consolidations, like offering a less-in-demand major on only one of the campuses, while looking at adding programs in areas like artificial intelligence and data engineering.
It, however, isn’t aimed at cutting humanities, or what Carter called “arts and letters.” To do so, he said, would violate the university’s 154-year-old mission.
Taken as a whole, Carter’s plan and the Regents' action appear to be the best possible way to transform NU to make the university more competitive and better serve the state and its young people.