May 15, 2015 | SharkAdmin Budgeting can be a hard task to oversee whether it’s for your personal life or managing an organization’s with hundreds of employees and thousands of students. In these last few months, college leaders have been diligently working on their budgets and were asked to reduce their overall expenditures by 5 percent in order to balance the budget. Northwest Vista College was allocated about $40 million for its budget, however due to rising expenses at the college, we asked all those who oversee budgets to find areas where they could cut. Several reasons for the same allocation include our enrollment has been flat since the fall of 2010 and more students are attending part time versus taking a full load. While our budget stayed the same, we had to contend with rising expenses that mostly surrounded labor costs. Due to compensation structure changes as well living wage increases, this pushed up salaries, which comes out of NVC’s budget. We also recently hired additional employees, which increased our labor expenses. Our labor costs represent about 83 percent of our budget and by the time the budget process is complete, we hope to be closer to 78 percent, which is more in line with district recommendations. While our fiscal year 2016 budget has been a challenging one to assess – in terms of dealing with higher expenses – we have put in place a number of steps during this budget cycle to make sure we are on secure path. This includes: Increased class enrollment caps to get us more aligned with our target average class size of 25 (at census) across the college. This allows us to serve the same number of students without incurring additional instructional costs. We also began an assessment of support labs for students, which included combining related labs into a single space with shared staffing starting in the fall of 2015. We chose to temporarily delay the expansion of the Learning Frameworks classes, also known as EDUC 1300, because of the labor costs associated with the need for additional instructors. During this process, it was decided to maintain travel and employee development budgets to give our staff opportunities for training; and we also committed to the cyclical computer and equipment replacement cycle. But if you had planned in your budget for a shiny new robot or upgrading your computer monitors to flexible flat screens, those expenditures were removed. Leaders have brainstormed on a variety of initiatives that would help increase revenue. Through the strategic planning process, a few ideas that we have identified include: Strategically scheduling courses whether it is more in the evenings and on the weekends to give students more options, which could increase enrollment. Being more proactive on encouraging students to pay on time so they won’t be dropped from their classes, which then lowers enrollment. Exploring incentives to motivate students to become full-time students. Students who take 12 hours or more are more likely to get their associate and bachelor’s degree compared to part-time students. Expanding the Early College High School and Dual Credit programs; and our math pathway model to help our students be more successful. Thank you for your contributions to the budget process and the passion and efficiencies you bring to your areas. I know this process is never easy and we all could use more time and resources. The next steps include the Alamo Colleges Board of Trustees approving not only our budget, but the overall district budget. If you have questions, please contact your college leader or Virginia Leggett, interim College Services vice president and budget officer. And if you have some innovative ideas to increase our revenue, send me an email.
