RENO –– Brandon Rhoades is going to college on a GI bill. He recently transferred from a community college to the University of Nevada, Reno and commutes from Carson City on his school days. He’s hoping to graduate by May 2011.

Rhoades attended the first of a series of crisis forums at UNR Tuesday night and said he was seeking to understand the dire situation.

“I just want to find out what the ins and outs are,” he said. “My main concern was tuition increases and I heard they’d be moving certain colleges out of the school, like business. I’m in business and that would be devastating to some of the people in the program. … I don’t know how that’s going to affect new people coming into the college.”

Rhoades’ GI bill covers only one more semester and under concerns of tuition increases and possibly losing the business program at UNR, he is uncertain if he’ll still be able to pay for his classes and what changes he’d have to make to get the classes he needs.

The Nevada Legislature and Gov. Jim Gibbons are preparing for a special session next week amid the town hall talks on the state general fund’s largest sector - education. University administrators are trying to solve a complex puzzle of where to make the cuts that would least devastate academics while the most passionate students are rallying and to clue in their less informed peers and motivate them in a call to action.

“On Jan. 22, all of our worlds came to a halt when the Economic Forum came out,” said chair of the Nevada Student Alliance, Eli Reilly, to a packed room in the Joe Crowley Student Union. “When that happened, that number was a real punch in the gut.”

Best guesstimates

Recently, Nevada System of Higher Education Chancellor Dan Klaich made a presentation to the Board of Regents, putting a perspective on the impacts the highest cuts would make on the state’s universities, state and community colleges.

Documents he referred to state that a 22 percent cut in general fund appropriations to higher education would amount to a $37 million cut for UNR in 2010 and $110 million in 2011.

In addition, 1,290 layoffs would be needed. Current employees would take a 20 percent pay cut across the system and would have to take five extra furlough days, adding on to the already required one day per month.

Tuition fees would go up 48 percent. Undergraduate tuition rates at universities would rise 48 percent from $156.75 per undergraduate credit to $232.09 per credit. Graduate students' per credit rates would rise from $239.50 to $345.61. At the community college level, tuition would rise from $69.25 per credit to $102.53.

Other projections, according to Klaich’s report, include 15,750 students unable to enroll, or 14 percent of students registered in the fall of 2009.

On Tuesday, President Milton Glick said in the first round of cuts, occurring in 2009, certain services, such as a writing center, math center and career center, were eliminated without causing real damage to educating its students.

“We cut $33 million and we did it without changing the nature of the university,” he said. “We’ve had students who have had a 28 percent increase in tuition. Thanks to our full-time faculty, they’re teaching 13 percent more credit hours than they were a year ago.

We’ve had staff furloughs, so they’ve done their work with a little less pay. … But with the next cuts we are going to change the nature of the university.”

Glick said the university’s job is to help make student’s degrees more valuable in the future than the day they receive them but the reductions would impede that goal.

“We’ll have arguments and disagreements, but we have to protect the integrity of the institution,” he said.

According to Klaich’s presentation, an additional $37 million reductions could result in programs being eliminated, more centers and units being closed, hiring freezes and furloughs and facility maintenance being deferred. Students would experience more fee increases and larger class sizes.

Klaich reported some community colleges could also be closed, such as Reno’s Truckee Meadows Community College, Desert Research Institute and Great Basin College in Elko.

Glick said Tuesday though the system may not be called to make as high as 22 percent in cuts, the reality of making any more cuts is very real.

“I think we’re going to see some hard times, but we’re committed to working with the university family to minimize the damage because we have to provide quality education, we have to provide access to quality education, we have to provide success and what we have to discover is the discovery of new knowledge,” he said.

‘Magnitudes’

UNR Provost Marc Johnson said Klaich did not present proposals to the Board of Regents but the “magnitudes” of reduction impacts.

“Once you start naming programs to really close, then you kind of put a death note on them and create a great deal of anxiety,” Johnson said.

Within the last couple of weeks, UNR’s administrators met with the Legislature’s interim finance committee and told the lawmakers that the core infrastructure of the university must be protected.

“To put it in perspective, since we hit our administrative units from 20 to 25 percent, if you’re going to keep the lights on and the grass mowed, you can’t keep cutting the administration and infrastructure,” Johnson said. “We have to have tenured faculty to keep the core academic education modes running. We can’t protect it if we only have 10 percent and that’s when we get into the discussion of closing programs, some majors, entire departments.”

Students’ tuition was raised 10 percent this year and Johnson said administrators expect they will see another 10 percent increase, up to about $160 per credit hour.

“While that’s still cheaper than most of the states around us, it’s difficult to raise tuition in this biennium,” he said. “It doesn’t mean we couldn’t raise it in 2012 and 13, but we would have to mount some kind of scholarship campaign.”

But beyond dollar amounts, the cuts would adversely affect UNR’s national reputation, which would be hard to rebuild in the process of economic recovery.

“The way to maintain nationally competitive is to bring strong undergraduate and graduate programs to keep faculty strong and keep them here,” he said.

If faculty members don’t receive comparable benefits, the ability to travel to conferences and professional meetings, the university loses its ability to entice strong teachers who can provide a quality education, Johnson said.

“It really does not pay to isolate your faculty by trapping them into Nevada when their national professions are meeting somewhere else,” he said. “Travel expenses are not big money. I’ve been an administrator in four other states and that’s always a political situation – to cut out-of-state travel.”

Johnson gave a real-life example of how the potential hiring of a qualified professor failed because the university did not offer enough.

“I gave them the example of a professor who had a job offer at North Texas (University) and we thought we made a good counter offer with a little bit of salary and some other good benefits,” Johnson said. “And he came back two weeks later and said, ‘The situation has gotten so bad, I don’t think you’ll be able to fulfill the promises you made to me, so I’m leaving.’ That was a real blow. That was the first person we ever had leave strictly because of the circumstances of the budget.”

A better life out of uncertainty

Johnson said despite any anxiety, now is a crucial time to be vigilant about what’s to come from the special session next week.

“Just try to stay cool for the next two weeks and each of the universities and agencies will know what their challenge is for cutting the budget,” he said. “The second thing is then we will go to work to identify those programs that need to be closed.”

He said most programs will remain open and strong if the university takes a “vertical” cutting strategy, rather than make across-the-board cuts in all the NSHE’s institutions.

Should any program be closed, Johnson said UNR staff will work with the students and inform them ahead of time.

“We will do everything we can to get the student graduated in that program or something very, very similar that can put them on the road to their career choice,” he said. “By our employment rights rules, we won’t be able to close any of these programs before next year.”

Glick said education, especially college, will be key to helping Nevada’s economy improve by attracting businesses with a vested interest in education and ensure that commitment will be passed on to future generations.

“We have to figure out how our children will have a better life than we do,” Glick said.