LSU’s main campus will furlough employees, stall pay raises and cut funding for its art museum and award-winning press as a way to trim costs and balance its budget this year, according to plans released Thursday.
The Baton Rouge campus was cut $19 million this fiscal year in the state budget passed by lawmakers and signed by Gov. Bobby Jindal. With cost increases in health care and retirement, LSU Chancellor Michael Martin said the hole was even larger, but tuition and fee boosts will fill millions of dollars of the gaps.
Martin’s plan for the main campus includes an average 3 percent cut to academic programs and varying types of reductions to nonacademic areas, including ancillary programs that rely on LSU to stay afloat, like LSU Press and its literary publication, the Southern Review.
Merit pay raises won’t be allowed, and non-faculty employees will be furloughed for 52 hours, an average 3 percent pay cut to each employee.
The plan lacked specifics, and Martin said more details would come as each department decides how to allocate its budget cuts.
The entire LSU System was cut by $52 million in state funds this year. Nearly all of LSU’s campuses released their budget-cutting plans online Thursday.
The University of New Orleans didn’t have a final plan in the group, but university officials held a press conference to announce they were eliminating nine top-level administrative positions and restructuring nonacademic departments to minimize the impact on classrooms. Athletics programs, thought to be threatened for closure, were spared major cuts.