NU responds to Pillen’s steep budget cuts: ‘We cannot cut our way to extraordinary’

University of Nebraska President Jeffrey Gold said Friday that Gov. Jim Pillen’s recent order to state agencies and institutions that they freeze their hiring processes and reduce their spending will have “significant" impacts on the university.

The University of Nebraska is just one entity among Nebraska’s state agencies, commissions and boards that are now navigating an abrupt 5% loss of their monthly budget allocations from Nebraska’s State Budget Division. In the same memo, Pillen said no open state-funded positions, except for sworn law enforcement and correctional officers, can be filled without approval from his State Budget Division.

The memo also said state entities must reduce their agencies’ physical footprint and “consolidate teams and services.” The governor gave state leaders until the end of the month to identify ways they could implement “fiscal restraint” and form proposals that “concentrate” on eliminating redundant processes, services, regulation and aid programs.

In a Friday message to university staff, Gold wrote: “What the governor’s office is asking of us is significant. This new reduction in the current year’s budget represents more than $36 million across the NU system.”

The governor’s order follows a biennial legislative session that saw a budget allocation from the state that was less than university leaders had requested. It led NU’s physical campuses to cut their budgets. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln saw the steepest reduction, with the Board of Regents voting in December to chop four academic programs. UNL leaders said the cuts would result in $6.7 million in savings.

NU campuses are also moving forward with tuition hikes to offset budget reductions.

“Over the past biennium – and many years before that – we have navigated budget reductions every year, and you – our faculty and staff – have responded with creativity, resilience and an unwavering commitment to our students, your professions and the communities we serve and that depend on us every day,” Gold said.

Gold said the university system has already reached out to its campus leaders to “strategize about next steps to implement these changes.”

The NU president said he acknowledged that there are limits to what the university campuses can do with decreasing support from the state.

"We cannot cut our way to extraordinary, nor can we fully realize our mission of exceptional teaching, research and statewide engagement if we are operating in a constant cycle of cuts and related restrictions, without the ability to predict even a single year of stability," Gold said.

UNL Interim Chancellor Katherine Ankerson said the university and its faculty members have faced repeated financial challenges and faced those issues with "extraordinary resolve."

"At the same time, we must acknowledge what these cycles have cost us," Ankerson wrote in an email Friday afternoon to university staff. "They have placed strain on our academic programs and research enterprise. They have tested the culture and shared sense of purpose that define this university. No one does their best work under the weight of uncertainty, and we cannot ask our students to reach their full potential — or expect to attract and retain the faculty, staff, and leaders our mission requires — if stability remains perpetually out of reach."

By way of full disclosure, members of the Nebraska Public Media newsroom are employees of UNL.