By Stephen Cook
President Joe Sopcich is looking to further reduce the college’s budget as well as increase revenue, according to an email sent to staff at the college earlier today.
Sopcich’s goals are to stabilize both the college’s reserves and capital budget, as well as establish salaries which the college “can sustain for the foreseeable future.”
In order to accomplish this, Sopcich is looking to implement a plan for future tuition rates. The system will be consistent and students will be informed “years in advance” so plans can be made accordingly, he said.
“Consequently, we plan to propose to the trustees a $3 a year tuition increase over the next five years,” Sopcich said. “If approved by the trustees, this means that by fiscal year 2018-2019, one credit hour will cost $100.”
As another part of Sopcich’s plan to action, he hopes to reduce the budget by at least $3 million. The college’s FY 2013-14 budget is $137,701,764 and the FY 2012-13 budget was $139,617,631.
In order to further reduce the budget, Sopcich said all programs at the college will be evaluated based on a set of criteria.
“Criteria used could be cost of the program, enrollment, enrollment trends, growth potential and national standing; service areas could look at volume of work/projects, cost to deliver such volume, redundancies in service, benchmarks versus other institutions, and more,” Sopcich said.
His message ended with a reminder that “Yes, we have no traditions.”
“As you evaluate your programs, ask yourselves why do we do what we do and whether there is a better way to serve our students and help them succeed,” Sopcich said. “This isn’t going to be easy, but we have such a wonderful opportunity to succeed because of the high quality of professionals we have on our campus. I trust we’ll take advantage of it and look to the future. Our students are counting on us.”
Sopcich will present his State of the College address tomorrow, Sept. 12 at 1 p.m. in the Polsky Theatre.
Be sure to follow @CampusLedger on Twitter for live coverage of the event.
Contact Stephen Cook, editor-in-chief, at scook35@jccc.edu.