Several Delta State University faculty and staff may lose jobs after University president Dan Ennis announced $3 million in budget cuts for the upcoming 2024-2025 academic year.
Since last year, the president has argued for the need to reduce DSU’s spending.
“For too long, Delta State’s enrollment has declined while the university’s expenditures have increased,” Ennis said in a message on the university’s website last September. “As a consequence, the institution has operated under a budget deficit, and that deficit has consumed our financial reserves.”
In a letter to the university on May 13 , Ennis outlined a “restructured budget” that included recommendations from the university’s Ad Hoc Committee on Budget Sustainability to reduce “$250,000 from Executive, Administrative, and Managerial salaries or Professional Non-Faculty salaries along with corresponding fringe benefits from the adjusted FY24 budget” and “$500,000 from Executive, Administrative, and Managerial salaries and Professional Non-Faculty salaries each, along with corresponding fringe benefits from the FY25 budget.”
The university will cut retirement incentives, remove vacant positions and cut 10 positions in the student affairs department. Delta State will also eliminate its vice president for executive affairs and chief of staff positions by not filling vacancies prior occupants left behind. The university will also cut its dean positions for Graduate Studies, Library Services and the College of Arts and Sciences. Ennis plans to reduce department and division chairs, administrative support staff, the career services office, the housing and residence life office, and the student life office.
“Per university and IHL policy, all tenured and tenure-track faculty will receive a contract for
FY25, despite the program changes,” Ennis stated. “In areas where degree programs are being discontinued, the Interim Provost will work with the Deans and Department/Division Chairs, as appropriate, to determine which faculty positions will be needed in future years to support the teach-out plans and programming. These future decisions will be communicated to faculty before July 1, 2024.”
Ennis said in the letter that the athletic director has agreed to adjust its budget. The department must also reduce its draw on the university budget by $200,000.
“The Athletic Director has made the commitment to increase revenue by approximately $350,000 through increased recruitment efforts and adjustment of roster sizes for several sports,” Ennis said in the letter.
Ennis said the plan will progress the university toward a sustainable budget that ends each year with a 3-5% contingency devoted to the university’s cash position until 90 days of cash is on hand. It also moves the university toward the IHL-mandated debt coverage ratio.
Amid the budget cuts, Ennis is authorizing four new positions in academic affairs and four new degree programs. Ennis stated in the letter that he will add new undergraduate degrees in visual and performing arts, digital media, secondary education, and humanities and social sciences.
“These anticipated new degrees will ensure that students have opportunities to pursue the liberal arts, whether through the content areas or through educator preparation,” Ennis said in the letter. “Also, these new degrees are intended to preserve a range of disciplines available for student learning, require fewer resources, and be more competitive for transfer students.”
Ennis has led the university since April 2023. Within four months of taking the job, Ennis told stakeholders that the university must overhaul its budget to avoid a financial crisis.
The university’s enrollment has declined in recent years. Only 2,700 students are enrolled for the current academic year. The university also exceeded its Fiscal Year 23 budget by $3 million. Ennis told those at a university town hall meeting in February that the current 10:1 student-to-faculty ratio was not stainable.
“I want us to be prepared for the unprecedented challenges facing higher education in the coming years,” Ennis said in his letter to the university. “We will modernize our recruitment operations so (that) we can mitigate the effects of a national decline in enrollment. We will revise our academic offerings so we can welcome a wider range of students and provide them with learning opportunities in forms and schedules that fit their lives.”
“We will reconsider how we have been delivering student services so that the Delta State experience can last a lifetime,” he continued. “We will resist tuition increases so that our most economically vulnerable students can continue to have access to the opportunities that a college degree can provide. We will move beyond basic survival and into a place where we have the capacity to take better advantage of our undeniable strengths.”
