Independent Student Newspaper for the University of Texas at San Antonio

The Paisano

Independent Student Newspaper for the University of Texas at San Antonio

The Paisano

Independent Student Newspaper for the University of Texas at San Antonio

The Paisano

University’s budget averts catastrophe

The University of Texas at San Antonio was one of the many universities across the nation affected by budget cuts and legislative changes. Many areas at UTSA suffered permanent base reductions on special items such as the Institute of Texan Cultures which experienced a reduction of 29 percent and the Texas State Data Center which suffered a cut of 18 percent.

In order to save the budget from some of the permanent reductions, UTSA used the increase in tuition and enrollment together with previous year’s “savings” of unallocated money to make up for the $11 million of budget cut. After balancing the budget, there were some extra funds available that were distributed to different areas of the university. For example, faculty tenure and promotions, and equality salary increases received $3.4 million.

Part of that money went to the 2.25 percent faculty salary increase.

“Dr. Romo wanted to make sure that professors were awarded for their hard work when the new budget was being adjusted.” Associate Vice President of Financial Affairs Janet Parker said.

One million dollars were set aside for permanent budget requests and out of that million, $750,000 will be use to hire new faculty next school year. Some other areas around the school also received some budget allocations-academic affairs was given $792,500, business affairs received $47,500, research received $50,000, student affairs received $75,000 and the marching band received $35,000.

“We were planning for much worse,” Parker said. They were looking at budget cuts all the way from $10 million up to $25 million. Even so, the budget cuts were not considered very helpful towards the momentum UTSA has been building up to achieve Tier One. For now, school officials were able to manage the budget and keep the school operating without any major setbacks.

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