TOLEDO, Ohio — The University of Toledo's Board of Trustees passed the school's 2023-2024 budget on Thursday, and it see reductions of 7%, totaling $21.8 million in cuts across all supported by the general fund and slashing jobs and programs alike.
UT President Gregory Postel spoke with WTOL 11 right after the vote to approve the budget, saying that after a decade of declining enrollment, the school is now hurting financially and is forced to make some hard choices.
"The demographics of the area are such that the population is not growing rapidly, fewer people are graduating high school than used to and there's more competition for colleges," Postel said.
Postel said this has led to fewer students going to mid-sized regional schools like UT than ever before, and it's putting their finances in a challenging place.
The school is down just over $30 million in revenue, its score with ratings agencies is below target and expenses are outpacing revenue. This has forced the reductions in the budget, Postel said.
"It was more of a thinning out," he said. "Almost everyone on the academic side of the house was affected, as well as support units."
This thinning out included job cuts to primarily vacant positions and positions which will go vacant next year. But 9% of those cuts resulted in 32 active employees being let go.
"The folks who did lose their jobs, of course, are eligible for rehire," Postel said. "We've been working with all of them to see if they'd be interested in jobs that come open."
Fifty-eight programs were also cut from the school curriculum. Postel said they tried to cut programs that had no students attending or with very limited attendance.
Graduate student Alyssa Jordan said some of the classes in her athletic training program were part of the cut.
"I think even though the numbers might not have been where they were in the past, it definitely hurts to see those programs go just because they are so needed in our profession," Jordan said.
To prevent further cuts, Postel said UT is actively looking to repair the school's shrinking population by appealing more to non-traditional, international and online students.
"Each piece of enrollment has a separate strategy and it's going to take a little time. It's hard to be patient," he said. "In academics, we want the problem to be solved yesterday. But it doesn't work that way with this kind of problem."