For the third time in just two years, Keene State College is once again facing budget cuts.
As a result of last year’s low first-year student enrollment and low figures in the college’s reserve fund to help supplement for the lack of revenue, KSC will have to pinch pennies and spend wisely until the financial situation is back on track.
It has been confirmed that KSC has been hit with a 15 percent reduction in department budgets across campus.
As if previous budget cuts weren’t harsh enough for faculty, staff and students, now with this most recent cut, may be forced out of their positions. Other positions may even be eliminated altogether.
KSC is the only school in the country that offers an undergraduate Holocaust and Genocide Studies program.
Department Chair and Professor Dr. Paul Vincent will be retiring at the end of this school year, which will leave only three professors left in the program.
The Equinox feels it’s important we focus on this program especially; if KSC isn’t able to offer it to undergraduates, no one else will.
Samantha Moore / Art Director
KSC, the only school in the country to offer this major to undergrads should be enough reason to find a solution.
Other programs, aside from Holocaust and Genocide Studies, are also feeling the effects of these budget cuts.
Recently, the German minor was almost cut.
Safety majors may soon be directly feeling the burden of these budget cuts as well. This program may potentially have issues with maintaining and repairing equipment. Using this equipment is a vital component to the learning experience within the program.
If we aren’t able to afford the upkeep of this much needed equipment, what could happen to this major in the future? This is something we need to keep in mind for all programs.
Some programs are short-staffed, leaving professors with longer and heavier workloads than before. Adjuncts have also seen a significant cut in pay.
If all goes as planned, the college is on track to resolve these budget problems by 2020. However, what does that mean for faculty, staff and students in the meantime?
Most of the students currently enrolled at KSC won’t even be here once the college’s budget situation has been resolved. Final budgets for departments will be finalized within a couple weeks from now.
Keene State may have been able to handle this situation better if it had been saving up reserve funds all along.
That way, we would then have a cushion to fall back on if this sort of scenario we’re seeing now was to happen.
While Keene State faces such financial strain, according to an article published onhttp://www.businessinsider.com/ the University of New Hampshire recently received a generous financial gain of $4 million from a former library employee who died.
Many are upset with how the university after they decided to invest in a $1 million scoreboard.
Honestly, this scoreboard is a huge waste of money, especially when KSC is having to make so many cuts. The Equinox doesn’t see many future UNH alumni looking back on their college careers and thinking they were positively affected by this scoreboard.
The money could have been used to better the lives of students, not fans staring at an electronic screen during half-time.
UNH has shown us all an example of why spending money unwisely is important.
No university or college has unlimited funds and should work to use their finances in a way that’ll benefit the majority positively.
The student’s experiences should be at the top of the priority list when making these sorts of decisions, especially when cutting program budgets.
It will be interesting to see what gets cut next here at KSC and how the money being cut will be used in the plan to resolve all these issues by 2020.
