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Budget shortfalls have become a grueling reality for Central Iowa colleges and universities, and some of the schools’ presidents still haven’t come up with ways to eliminate the deficits.

“As it currently stands, DMACC (Des Moines Area Community College) will start next year with about $2.3 million less than we started the current year,” said DMACC President Rob Denson. “And the last thing we are talking about is tuition increases, but when the dust all settles, really our only additional source of revenue is to increase tuition.”

Denson said his school would have to raise tuition by $7 per credit hour just to cover the budget shortfall, which still doesn’t account for the $3.8 million the college is anticipating in salary increases for next year. Currently, DMACC has two teachers’ unions on the campus, one that is in the second year of a three-year bargaining agreement and one working on a support-staff agreement that is being renegotiated for next year.

“I asked the board not to give me a raise, which they agreed to, so everything is really on the table,” Denson said. “What we want to try to avoid is a situation where we would have to have any layoffs. No one is going to lose their job, because we need everyone we have working for us.”

Beside his salary freeze, Denson said, the college has also implemented a hiring freeze for most vacant positions, eliminated nearly all out-of-state travel, canceled nearly every membership it had that is not required for accreditation and has informed groups that it sponsors that it will not be able to sponsor them next year.

“As we look, there are things that we find that we are glad we found,” he said. “Like the fact that there was a rental unit that we canceled that we can save $3,000 a year on.”

Denson said DMACC has identified nearly $1.4 million in savings, but he knows that is not enough to eliminate the deficit. “These are all things we should be funding, so it’s our faculty and staff who are working harder with less to maintain quality,” he said.

DMACC has also been working with the Legislature and Gov. Chet Culver to find ways to maximize state funding for the college.

“Clearly we are working with the Legislature and the governor to make sure they understand the impacts,” he said. “The Regent (universities) are doing the same thing – we are just one of many voices. We are going to work with them to get through this situation.”

State-funded universities and community colleges aren’t the only higher education institutions that have been affected. David Maxwell, president of Drake University, said his school has experienced a 38 percent reduction in endowments, which results in a six-figure decrease in funding for the private university, and contributions to its annual fund have decreased by 8 to 10 percent. Yet Maxwell claims that the drops in endowments and annual giving are not nearly as significant as those experienced by larger private schools, such as Harvard University or Brown University.

“It’s a lot of money, but it does not cause the institutional disruption like the Harvards or the Browns; the current market is hurting them terribly,” he said. “It’s the only time in my career that I’ve been well-served by having a small endowment. So the impact on our operating budget is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and while that’s a lot of money, it’s definitely something we can handle in the short term, at least in planning for next year’s budget.”

Maxwell said the university has implemented a set of precautionary measures that delay or reduce certain types of expenditures until it is sure it has the revenues to support them, such as delaying nonessential equipment purchases and holding off on the disbursement of restricted endowments.

Drake also has devised four possible budget scenarios – best case, likely case, worse case and worst case – based on factors such as net revenues, target enrollment numbers and student retention rates. The four scenarios are being drafted into individual university-wide contingency plans that will indicate the sequence of steps that will need to be taken if Drake falls short of its revenue targets, Maxwell said.

Looking forward, Maxwell remains “cautiously optimistic” and believes Drake’s most likely budget scenario will be the “likely case,” which looks very much like the past two years, he said.

But despite his optimism about Drake’s financial standing, Maxwell says he’s more concerned with the impact the current conditions will have on the students who are currently attending college or are preparing to enter college.

“The big-picture concern that I have is that I’m very worried about the long-term damage to higher education, to our students and the budget cuts to public institutions – those things cannot help the quality of institutions,” he said. “I’m very concerned about the overall health of higher education in this country, and at the same time, I’m concerned about students as their resources and their parents’ resources contract. We all ought to be concerned with the health and vitality of our institutions.”

But not all college presidents express as much worry as Maxwell. Des Moines University (DMU) President Terry Branstad said even though his school’s endowments have decreased by nearly $40 million, the university experienced an increase in the number of contributors and even plans to expand its facilities.

“We have achieved over $100 million (in endowments in the past); now it’s down below $70 million, probably closer to $60 million,” Branstad said. “But it’s more than it was five years ago, so we feel good about that. And the number of contributors has grown, even in these difficult times, and the numbers in our annual campaign have gone up, so both the numbers and the amount being contributed has gone up.”

Branstad said DMU doesn’t intend to cut staff and is on schedule to give normal salary increases, complete the funding for the vacant provost position and continue to add some staff in the coming year. Additionally, DMU is in the process of drafting a fiscal-needs budget for additional buildings and parking ramps that would be constructed over the next three or four years, Branstad said.

“We are a private institution, so we don’t have the problems of the state budget cutbacks, which in this case is a plus,” he said. “We aren’t used to seeing that money, so we aren’t going to miss it.”

The university is also looking into expanding its College of Health Sciences and will be conducting feasibility studies on an occupational therapy degree program and a doctor of health sciences degree program.

“We have been very frugal and conservative in the way we have managed our resources, and during this time, people appreciate that more than they normally would,” he said.

“In difficult economic times, people still need health care. … We have some challenges ahead of us, but those are growing pains, and that’s a good thing.