As public colleges brace for fiscal trouble caused by the COVID-19 crisis, some are attempting to lessen the blow to lower-earning employees by giving them shorter furloughs than higher-paid staff is receiving.
University of Idaho is the only public four-year university in Idaho that hasn’t said whether it is considering income-based furloughs, The Argonaut found after speaking with all four Idaho state schools.
Income-based furloughs involve temporarily laying people off of work at varying lengths that are tied to their income.
Three of Idaho’s four four-year public universities are, or have expressed interest in, furloughing employees at varying levels tied to their income. Boise State University and Lewis-Clark State College have already rolled out income-based furloughs. A spokesperson for Idaho State University, Andrew Taylor, said the university is considering such a move in addition to department-level budget cuts.
UI Director of Communications Jodi Walker said the university hasn’t finalized any plans for budget responses to the pandemic. She said UI’s leadership “is looking at a variety of ways to address the COVID-19-related budget reductions.”
“We don’t know the full impact of COVID-19 until we have solid numbers for fall enrollment,” Walker said.
The wave of furloughs at Idaho colleges comes as low-income Americans are bearing the brunt of the impending recession. The Pew Research Center found last week half of low-income earners say they can’t afford their bills in full, and nearly two-thirds of low-income earners say they’ll use their stimulus money to cover essential expenses.
Idaho college administrators project their schools will lose millions during the COVD-19 crisis. But they don’t have clear budget plans yet because they don’t know if campus will be open in the fall and they don’t understand how badly the pandemic will hurt their finances until fall enrollment rates become clearer.
The lack of clarity stems from Idaho public colleges relying heavily on tuition and student fees for funding, a change that began decades earlier when taxpayer money funded almost the entirety of Idaho public colleges’ budgets, according to the Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy, a non-profit that analyzes state budget and tax policies.
The Center’s Director, Alejandra Cerna Rios, said Idaho’s reliance on tuition means “enrollment is going to have a really big impact.”
“We don’t know how many students will come back to higher education in the state, or if they will invest in virtual learning,” Cerna Rios said. “It’s a new area for institutions that have really made the education experience as much about the campus and all of the resources and support available as instruction in the classroom.”
The Center found in a 2019 report that Idaho taxpayer dollars went from supporting nearly all of public colleges budgets a few decades ago to supporting roughly half the budgets in recent years. As funding sources for Idaho public colleges shifted to nearly a 50-50 split between tuition and taxpayer funds, the cost of tuition spiked. When adjusted for inflation, average tuition and fees for Idaho public colleges are six-times higher this year than they were in 1980, according to the Center’s report.
!function(e,i,n,s){var t=”InfogramEmbeds”,d=e.getElementsByTagName(“script”)[0];if(window[t]&&window[t].initialized)window[t].process&&window[t].process();else if(!e.getElementById(n)){var o=e.createElement(“script”);o.async=1,o.id=n,o.src=”https://e.infogram.com/js/dist/embed-loader-min.js”,d.parentNode.insertBefore(o,d)}}(document,0,”infogram-async”);The budget panics Idaho public colleges now face follow a year of budget pains from the 2019 school year. Just months ago, UI was discussing plans to reduce costs in the face of state-mandated budget cuts and a $21 billion budget deficit. College administrators across Idaho expect additional fiscal trouble due to the COVID-19 crisis forcing them to shutter campuses and cancel events.
Cerna Rios said the COVID-19 crisis could throw a wrench in the state’s efforts to increase the rate of Idaho high school graduates who “go on” to pursue higher education. She said decreased student enrollment could “drastically alter the higher education landscape in our state.
“Overall, it’s more prudent than ever to examine whether Idaho’s investment is appropriate for the outcomes we want to see, those outcomes now including the ability to produce more Idahoans with a post-secondary education as we recover from what is expected to be a significant recession,” Cerna Rios said.
Kyle Pfannenstiel can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @pfannyyy