The rising cost of employee benefits and less out-of-state tuition have created a gap this fiscal year, so the administration has called for budget cuts.
This will continue. There is no way for the University of Idaho student population to recover since the birthrate crashed in 2010.
The University of Idaho has handed down departmental budget cuts to defray an expected $14 million shortfall for the current fiscal year.
UI Vice President for Administration and Finance Brian Foisy said the shortfall is the result of an increase in expenditures to cover employee benefits, as well as an expected drop in revenue related to out-of-state tuition. Foisy said a $7 million share of the deficit can be linked to the rising cost of employee benefits.
Foisy said the UI administration charges employee salaries and benefits against departmental budgets. For example, if someone makes $100,000 a year, UI administrators charge the department $100,000 to pay that employee’s salary, and then a fixed percentage of that salary is also charged against departmental budgets to pay for the employee’s benefits. Foisy said that fixed percentage is going up as the cost of the underlying services covered by those benefits increases.
“These are percentages that are approved by the federal government — so we have some negotiating ability with them, (but) for the most part, they set the rates,” Foisy said. “As those go up every year, if the percentage is higher, the charges out to the departments are more; if the percentage is lower, the charges out to the departments are less.”
Via the Moscow-Pullman Daily News