Schools

Connecticut's College System Facing $5.5 Million Deficit

Tuition and fee hikes implemented this year won't yield badly-needed revenues until 2014.

Despite millions of dollars in cuts this year the state’s college and university system is facing a $5.5 million deficit for the fiscal year that ends July 1. 

Finance officials for the state’s Board of Regents for Higher Education learned this week that cutbacks in staffing and other budget reductions, including a hiring freeze that was intended to stave off a budget shortfall, have not worked and the board will have to take additional cost-saving measures, according to the Connecticut Mirror.

While the board recently approved tuition hikes across the system, which includes four state universities and nine community colleges, those increases don’t take effect until the 2013-2014 school year. 

"The situation seems pretty dire," the Mirror quotes Gary Holloway, chairman of the Board of Regent’s finance committee. The committee, Holloway added, has not yet determined how to make up the shortfall. 

The cuts made earlier by the Board of Regents eliminated 400 staff members from the college system and saved it $14.8 million, the Mirror reports. 

Those cuts proved controversial with students and staff, some of whom protested and complained that the state is giving the system much less attention than it does the University of Connecticut, which is not part of the state college system. Students this year also protested the state college system’s decision to hike tuition by more than 5 percent for in-state commuters and 4 percent for in-state students who live on one of the four university campuses. 


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