IHL approves administrative cuts at Delta State, clearing another budget hurdle

Delta State University’s governing board approved more budget cuts at its regular meeting Thursday — this time, at the administrative level.

The regional university in the Mississippi Delta now has three colleges instead of four as part of its quest for financial sustainability under the current president, Daniel Ennis.

This has resulted in the loss of four chairs and two less deans, the administrators that lead the colleges. A dean of graduate education was also eliminated even though that position did not oversee a college. The changes also led to two fewer positions at the vice presidential level, but Ennis created a new one to oversee enrollment management — something the university in Cleveland has struggled for years to fix.

“It didn’t make sense to stick with the same administrative structure” after the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees approved the university’s programs cuts earlier this summer, Ennis said. “What we did today was implicit in their approval of the cuts … but still you have to go through the steps and get the final approval.”

It’s all in an effort to reduce $750,000 a year in administrative level spending as part of Ennis’ master plan for the university’s budget that he unveiled at a town hall in May.

In an email, a university spokesperson did not answer how much in savings the university netted with these administrative cuts but it is expected to align with Ennis’ goal.

“The administrative changes approved by the IHL Board of Trustees represent a key step toward better fiscal health for the University,” Christy Riddle wrote, “and we anticipate we will see a reduction in overall administrative costs that aligns with our stated goal.”

The move brings the university one step closer to finalizing faculty layoffs. Before that can happen, Ennis said, faculty will have to sign off on the new degree programs, and IHL will approve them.

“I could probably figure out the number of faculty (to be laid off) now if everything we pose to the faculty passes,” Ennis said, “but I don’t want to get that far because they have a right to modify, they have a right to say no, they have a right to do all kinds of things.”

Ennis expects the university’s proposal to pass the faculty, but until then, he said the administration won’t know which classes it needs faculty to teach. This is further complicated by the steady drip of faculty layoffs ahead of the fall semester.

“If a faculty member resigns and they take another job and it was likely they were gonna be laid off,” Ennis said, “then that doesn’t change things. But sometimes faculty leave who we didn’t expect to leave and then you look and go okay, does that change out needs? Does that affect what we were gonna do?”

A visual aid of the changes was presented in an infographic to IHL trustees. The College of Arts and Sciences is now the College of Education Arts and Humanities.

UPDATE 8/16/24: This story has been updated to correct what the infographic presented to IHL trustees showed.

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