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The University of New Orleans is undergoing what its president calls “right-sizing,” coming to grips with a $15 million deficit brought on by decades of shrinking enrollment.
That’s meant a 15% drop in funding for academics, and an even bigger cut to athletics, 25%.
Dozens of unfilled positions were eliminated this summer to limit layoffs, UNO President Kathy Johnson told staff. Still, nine non-tenured employees were laid off, and staff and faculty fear more layoffs could be coming.
“Getting through this year is going to be tough,” Johnson told WWNO's Bob Pavlovich this week. “I’m not going to mince words. There’s a lot of challenging decisions that we’re making.”
Those include closing Milneburg Hall, which needs significant repairs, and moving the departments it houses elsewhere. Some administrators, including Johnson, have agreed to salary cuts.
While athletics have taken the biggest hit so far, Johnson said that doesn’t mean she sees them as expendable. She stressed the larger cut was because the department had been spending more in recent years.
“It would be unwise to think rashly about doing away with athletics,” she said. “What I would ask athletics to do is the same as what I’m asking all of my colleagues to do, and that is to work within an established budget.”
She said plans to build a track and field stadium on campus, with the help of $13 million in state funds, have been withdrawn. The university will continue using facilities at City Park instead.
Johnson, who took over for John Nicklow nine months ago, said her plan to close the school’s gap includes using technology to operate more efficiently.
She also hopes to attract a broader range of students, including from out-of-state, transfers and adults who are already working but looking to pivot and would benefit from short-term credential programs.
While it’s time to face financial realities and adapt, Johnson said the school isn’t teetering on the edge of a cliff — yet.
“I wouldn’t have come. I wouldn’t have bought a house had I really been worried about that,” she said.
Her goal is to bring the school’s $100 million budget down to $85 million, something she aims to accomplish by the end of June.
Andrea Mosterman, a history professor and president of UNO’s faculty senate, said this isn’t the first time the school has faced cuts since she arrived in 2011.
“We’ve always come out OK,” she said. “I’m hopeful that it’s the same this time.”
Doing ‘less with less’
The public university enrolled more than 17,300 students before Hurricane Katrina hit. After, its enrollment dropped by more than half, before rebounding some in 2006 when it enrolled about 11,750 students.
In 2010, its numbers started slipping again and a decade later, it enrolled just 8,375 students.
Like other schools, UNO’s enrollment took another hit after the pandemic, dropping to 6,600 students last fall. Aid from the federal government provided “tremendous relief,” Johnson said, but it was temporary.
“It really was this fiscal year, the first year those funds were gone that the gap became apparent,” she said.
All state-funded universities will see their funding drop further if lawmakers and Gov. Jeff Landry allow Louisiana’s sales tax to expire in 2025. Johnson said her team is preparing for that scenario, but “it would be tough.”
Along with the language of “right-sizing,” Johnson has encouraged department heads to do “less,” not more, “with less.”
She said she's asked her leadership team to think about every aspect of the school’s operations and ask themselves: What can we lose?
When it comes to back office functions, like human resources and finance, Johnson hopes to automate some processes. She also sees streamlining course offerings as a big opportunity to cut costs.
“There are some courses that are being delivered to a very, very small number of students,” she said, adding that as a steward of public resources, "it’s better for us to shift to not necessarily having 50 students in a classroom, but 20 students in a classroom rather than 10.”
Johnson said greater consistency in when particular classes are offered will help students better plan. “These sorts of practices should tighten up the offering of courses,” she said. “Hopefully, doing what we're doing now with fewer instructional staff.”
When it comes to applying for grants — a sometimes cumbersome process, but one faculty often depends on to conduct research — Johnson hopes to turn to to private industry for help. She wants the university to work more closely with its tenants at The Beach, the school’s research and technology park, to secure funding.
Mosterman said she’s glad Johnson is addressing declining enrollment, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t stressful.
“Some people are being laid off and there might be more people that are laid off and that’s always difficult,” she said.
“We see similar circumstances across the country," she added. "So when we’re thinking about attracting faculty, yes, that can be a struggle if you don’t have the resources, but there are a lot of places in the same situation.”
Staff fear ‘mass layoffs’
Members of United Campus Workers (UCW) of Louisiana, the union representing UNO employees, created a petition in May, calling on leadership to take specific steps to save money and avoid "mass layoffs.”
Actions include closing most campus buildings on Fridays (shifting to a four-day, 40-hour workweek or remote work option), reducing “administrative bloat” by limiting spending on consultants and other outside services and launching a crowd-funding campaign to collect small donations from UNO’s 80,000-plus alumni.
Organizers said they emailed the petition to Johnson and other administrators in late May, but never heard back.
Johnson told WWNO she didn't receive the email and only learned of the petition this week. The school’s provost and deans were also unaware, she said, adding that her team is trying to figure out why the message didn’t reach them.
“I thought some of their suggestions were excellent and things we should be doing anyway,” Johnson said, pointing specifically to the petition’s advice to save energy. “I think that’s a great idea.”
She said there are existing policies that will make some of the actions more difficult to accomplish, but she'll try as best she can.
In a statement, UCW of Louisiana’s steering committee for UNO said now that Johnson has received the petition, they hope she will consider their ideas seriously.
They also called on the university to be more forthcoming about cuts that have already been made — and are coming.
“We have been in touch with workers who have simply stopped receiving any communication about class assignments for the fall,” the statement said. “And are having to assume that their contracts have not been renewed.”
