The announcement came at a meeting of department heads and chairs, leaders of staff, student and faculty groups, and other decision-makers. It was standing-room-only in Needles Hall room 3001 for the provost and president's briefing on UW's financial prospects.
Post-secondary leaders are lobbying the government to prevent the cuts, reduce them, or at the very least spread them out over time, said UW president James Downey. But Harris seems to be resolute. "You ain't seen nothing yet," as this morning's Sun proclaims.
The one other hope that's being held out is for new rules about student tuition fees -- "so that the institutions can have the flexibility to replace at least some of the lost revenue", Downey said.
Kalbfleisch said he had done a "rough" calculation of how much UW is going to need to cut from the budget for 1996-97. If the $400 million figure stands, and if two-thirds of the cut comes in 1996 and the rest in 1997, and if tuition fees are allowed to rise 10 per cent, the cut as of May 1, 1996, would be about 7 per cent, he said. It could easily be more.
The provost pointed out that an institution that spends 85 per cent of its money on salaries and benefits can achieve big savings only by reducing the number of people it pays, or cutting their salaries. During the question period, someone asked how UW would decide whether salvation lies in job cuts or pay cuts. "A very good question," Kalbfleisch said. "It is certainly something that you can talk about with your colleagues."
He said that if the number of people working at UW is going to drop, it will be essential to eliminate some parts of the work that are now done -- "to find ways to continue to deliver quality programs and services" without increasing the workload and stress on the people who are left.
"Frankly, I think there is no university in a better position to do this than the University of Waterloo," he said.
Kalbfleisch said UW will write the 1996-97 budget in the usual way. A proposal will come from executive council and provost to the senate finance committee, the university senate and eventually the board of governors. A small committee of executive council is now at work "looking at possible general strategies", he said.
It has reached two conclusions so far: the hiring freeze, and the need for an early retirement program. As soon as details are worked out, he said, there will be an announcement of a "window" for early retirement, probably open to faculty and staff who are 55 years old with 10 years of UW service.
As for the way cuts can be made in 1996, "I think nothing can be ruled out," he said -- neither "horizontal" cuts, in which every department loses the same percentage of its budget, nor "vertical" cuts in which some activities suffer larger cuts or are eliminated altogether. UW's traditional decentralized system of budgeting "has worked very well in the past", Kalbfleisch said, but as Waterloo faces huge cuts, "I think we're beyond the stage where we can handle it purely in that way." In other words, there may have to be some central decisions about how major savings are to be made.
Chris Redmond
Information
and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo
(519) 888-4567 ext. 3004
credmond@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca