UL System to Address Budget Challenges

BATON ROUGE, La. –The University of Louisiana System will address budget challenges Friday in light of Governor Bobby Jindal’s November 20 executive order.

According to UL System President Randy Moffett, the system is actively reviewing vacant positions and low-completer programs, exploring ways to expand its 4- year-old bulk purchasing initiative and pursuing other efficiencies in order to address budget challenges at its eight universities.

Moffett will present some of the strategies Friday at the regular meeting of the UL System Board of Supervisors at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux.

“We have started a review of vacant positions and have asked our presidents to identify those positions that are critical to the mission, safety and maintenance of academic services for their institutions for the duration of our fiscal year,” Moffett said. “While we want to honor any commitments that have been recently made, we want to be prudent in our approach to filling other vacancies.”

UL System campuses will also address budget challenges through a review of academic programs.

“We have started to examine programs with low-completer numbers and dovetail this work with the Board of Regents’ initiatives in this area,” Moffett said.

He said by January he hopes to present a more detailed plan for cost containment measures, as well as further initiatives that would provide for more efficiencies across the system.

Purchasing efficiencies have been a focus of the UL System for the past several years. In 2004 the system formed an Ad-Hoc Committee on System-wide Purchasing that has realized significant savings through bulk agreements and other approaches.

The effort, which has targeted bulk purchasing of utilities, computer hardware and software and laboratory supplies and equipment began with all eight UL System campuses and has since expanded to include other institutions. The effort also involved paperwork reduction efforts at two UL System campuses.

“Over the past several years, the UL System has implemented purchasing efficiencies totaling in the millions of dollars. In light of budget concerns expressed by Governor Jindal and his administration, we are redoubling our efforts to identify further strategies to reduce costs,” Moffett said.

For more information on this and other initiatives of the UL System, visit the system website at http://www.ulsystem.net.