LUBBOCK, TX (KCBD) -
The Texas Tech Board of Regents voted to approve the $1.4 billion system wide budget for the 2012 fiscal year Friday. This is the smallest budget increase the university has seen in 20 years. In fact, the budget for the entire system only increased by less than 1 percent.
For a year and a half they have been preparing for state cuts. That meant Tech had no choice but to cut employees.
"We could see that this was going to be coming. We did not fill some jobs and we had to let some go," said Texas Tech University Chancellor, Kent Hance.
Chancellor Hance says 600 jobs were cut in the entire Texas Tech system, 218 of those were at the Lubbock campus. He says they tried to not let go any faculty and mainly focused on administrative positions.
"We pretty well finalized all of that. So it's not something that's going to be happening in the future, it's primarily happened in the past," said Hance.
What saved Tech from cutting the budget further is the revenue they will receive from current enrollment, increasing fees such as parking and athletic revenue.
"And we've try to save money everywhere we can," said Hance.
This coming year the Lubbock campus will work with a 4 percent increase. Last year the budget was $660 million, this year it will be $687 million.
However, the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center and Angelo State University shared a combined loss of $14 million, which will affect class sizes.
"They have to teach more students and you don't have the smaller classes. They will also have to make some cuts at Texas Tech University. People that had a class of maybe 30 in it last time will have 40 or 45 this time," said Hance.
On the upside, Chancellor Hance says they are going to raise money and get more scholarships than ever before, because of the cuts.
"One of the things that happened is the state decreased the Texas grants. That's for people that are in a household making $40,000 or less. So we feel like we will lose some students on that," said Hance.
Texas Tech plans to fundraise $1 billion.
"If you look at Texas Tech budget compared to the major schools in the state of Texas, we have done more with less than anyone else," said Hance.
Hance says if the recession continues they might be facing more cuts for the next year as well.
Despite the budget shortfall the regent added a new Wind Science and Engineering undergraduate program Friday, which will start in the fall.
The regents also approved a new indoor soccer field that will be named after former Texas Tech Athletic Director Gerald Myers. John Walker gave a generous donation of $700,000 for the facility. The total cost is $900,000.
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